Category: Action/Thriller Publisher: Adoro Books/Bauu Institute
Pages: 352
Copyright: Mar 15, 2009
ISBN-13: 9780982046722
Batting champ Mundo Carrasco becomes Mazatlan's top journalist but loses his beautiful, amoral love to revolutionary murder during Carnival.
If anybody wondered why star journalist Mundo Carrasco would stop investigating Mazatlan's drug lords and politicos in order to run the shady new puppet mayor's press relations, then they had never been to bed with the scorching, amoral, monumental Mijares. Mazatlan's huge, blaring Carnival became the greatest time Mundo had lived since his days as a local baseball hero: access to the real power and closeted skeletons, a political future of his own, and...mostly...the perfect flesh of Mijares. Then the mayor beats up his wife, the city government starts to unravel into scandal and panic, and they start killing people--with Mundo right up there on their list. Tumbling through the tumult of Carnival, mob violence, narco suites and wretched bulldozed hovels, musical mayhem, his own corruption, and three women who want to reclaim his soul for his own good and their own purposes, Mundo is either sorting himself out or getting totally mixed up...if he comes out of it with his damaged scruples and bruised hide intact. Linton Robinson is a veteran award-winning journalist and author of several popular books on Mexican culture. His work is very much affected by the decades he has lived in various parts of Mexico and Central America. "Sweet Spot" is a valentine to the eight years he lived on a hill right above the throbbing heart of Mazatlan's carnival celebration, wrote for local newspapers, and hung out with the local musicians, athletes, and criminals.
Excerpt
I had seen the whole bola before and hadn’t liked their looks. I liked them even less huddled up in the healing halls of Sagrada Familia in their muddy plastic sandals, grimy ‘Señor Frogs’ -shirts, and cheap polyester pants. Especially the two big, rough-looking bricklayers who wore imitation Stetson sombreros instead of filthy baseball hats. They didn’t seem to like my looks much, either.
I didn’t know them as individuals, but I’d known the herd since childhood. They were The Poor. Not the superpobres picking scraps out of garbage dumps, just the typical working poor of Mazatlán. And not the sort of crowd usually allowed in the marble arches of La Familia. I had seen this very bunch during the campaign, filling the crowds when my boss – El Candidato back then – dragged us out to speeches in the lower class barrios. They were his wife’s shock troops, Blanquita’s bodyodor politic. To me, they represented something I’d left behind a long time ago. To El Candidato himself, they were a huge voting block delivered to him by marriage like a scabby dowry. To her, they were a flock of birds to be fed, a mass of grubby children to be nurtured and loved, a doting family to be embraced and protected. They belonged to her – and therefore to Us and His Campaign – simply because they worshipped her.
Which I could understand completely, I would tell you straight off that I only took the damn job because of Mijares. It wasn’t reciprocal enough, to be called love, but worship will cover it.
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