Orbiting buzzards in the desert country often indicated that a person is dead out there somewhere. Those circling buzzards did in this case as U.S. Border Patrol Officer Dolph Martinez had seen them and headed their way while pursuing a group of undocumented workers that had crossed the border and were heading through the surrounding desert. Dolph Martinez had first seen the blood on a cactus and then found the body. While it is not immediately clear whether or not the deceased person was part of that group under custody nearby, it is clear is that the deceased probably died by way of having his head opened up via gunshot and not the perils of the desert. The deceased is also wearing distinctive boots and is not the first person wearing those particular style of boots to be found dead in the surrounding desert in recent days.

Based out of the hardship duty station in Presidio, Texas, Patrol Officer Dolph Martinez, wants to investigate the case. Especially because the deceased was found clutching a vial of blue metallic liquid. One of those reasons he wants to investigate is that Sister Quinn is known to pass these vials out now and then as some sort of talisman. In a region known for eccentrics, she stands out as she is part nun and part witch doctor. Some believe she is a saint in human form while other locals claim she transforms into an owl at night, just like the souls of the dead, and flies around to perch on tombstones. She is complicated and a sign that everything is going to get very complicated fast.

Investigating a murder has little to do with his job description, so his boss shuts down that idea. Instead, the mission of the Border Patrol is to round up the folks they were tracking, process them, and send them back across the border knowing full well they are going to see them again.

But, officer Dolph Martinez can’t leave it alone and is soon talking to the nun and many other folks while running afoul of his boss, an officious DEA agent, and a number of other folks who wish he would accept life as it is in the Border county where a river does nothing to stem the flow of people and goods. The investigation may kill him, body and soul, before he is through as things are going to get complicated and weird.

This book was the 1997 Frank Waters Southwest Writing Contest winner and was published in 1998. As such, it depicts the Southwest Texas border country that I grew up with and existed before 9/11 changed everything. Because it was published over twenty years ago, it reflects language that may offend some readers today as it repeatedly refers to “wets” which is slang for “wetbacks” or illegals. It also contains some language that does not reflect women in the best way of description along with some graphic scenes of intimate sexuality. It is a book in today’s world that, at times, some would classify as “edgy” and others would call misogynistic.

Regardless of all that, there is a complicated and quite intense bordering on the surreal read at work here. The tale does not fit easily into any labeling box. I enjoyed it while conceding that the last forty pages or so delves into the surreal and issues far too complicated to be easily explained. I also concede the fact that part of my appreciation was no doubt fueled by my love for the Big Band area that dates back to my earliest childhood memories. This is not a read for everyone, but it is a very good read.

El Camino Del Rio: A Novel
Jim Sanderson
https://www.jimsanderson-writer.com/
University of New Mexico Press
August 1998
ISBN# 0-8263-1990-4
227 Pages

My reading copy came from the Downtown Branch of the Dallas Public Library System.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2021 ( )

This is one of the older mysteries that Brash Books is reissuing in paper and digital formats. It was originally published by the University of New Mexico Press in 1998 and it won the 1997 Frank Waters Southwest Writing Award.

This is the first in Mr. Sanderson's series about Border Patrol Senior Agent Dolph Martinez and it has aged quite well. We do not find cell phones or heated rhetoric about the evil Mexicans, but the landscape has not changed and within the vivid descriptions of geography and climate Dolph's mid-life reckoning is real.

I feel obliged to say, though, that some of the characters and situations aren't as believable as they might be and the racist language is long outdated, but I wasn't much bothered. I do question, though, how one survives being shot 4 times in the gut way out in the desert (leaving only one scar, too) but we must factor in divine intervention and a smaller gun bore.

I received a review copy of "El Camino del Rio" by Jim Sanderson (Brash) directly from the publisher. ( )

I am one of those native Texans, and there are a whole lot of us, who have never been down to South Texas, that part of the state that the uninitiated traveler suspects is as Mexican as it is American. We hear all the stories, especially post-9-11, about the open border down there but it doesn’t always seem real to us. Jim Sanderson’s El Camino Del Rio, which was actually written well before the 9-11 murders, paints a vivid picture of life in a small Texas border town. That world, as Sanderson depicts it, was already a complicated one for law enforcement officers on both sides of the border. One can only imagine what it must be like today.

Dolph Martinez, a Border Patrol officer in Presidio, Texas, spends his life caught in the middle. Despite his striking Hispanic physical appearance, Martinez, known as “Pretty Boy” to many of the locals, is only half Mexican (born to a Mexican idler and the daughter of a prominent South Texas rancher). Dolph has always chosen the path of least resistance in his life. The path to Presidio started for Dolph right out of high school when he turned down a scholarship to Rice University in favor of joining the military because, as one thing always leads to another, that’s where he finds himself now – in charge of a Border Patrol office assigned the impossible task of stopping the flow of illegals into Texas and guns into Mexico.

This time around, though, it’s going to take more than just bringing a few Mexicans back to the border bridge and watching them cross back into Mexico. Dolph and his people are finding dead bodies on the Texas side of the border, and the men responsible for the murders are on the Mexican side of the line. Dolph knows that he is going to need to work both sides if he is to stop the killing before anyone else dies – and he knows just how to do that. What he doesn’t foresee is how many of his friends and co-workers are going to become casualties of one type or another before this one is over.

El Camino Del Rio is a highly atmospheric snapshot of what the border was like when illegal drugs and guns crossing the border was still the biggest problem that South Texas law officials encountered. Sanderson’s colorful characters are all trying to make the best of the hybrid world they live in by picking and choosing the best on offer from both sides. However, the familiarity they have with how things are done in Mexico is a double-edged sword, one that most certainly cuts both ways. Dolph Martinez is good at what he does, but he has his hands full with the rogue do-gooder nun offering safe haven to as many illegals as she can round up, the friend who is determined to construct a “hot springs” tourist attraction in one of the hottest locations in the United States, and the tall blonde who catches his eye when he can least afford it.

This one is fun…and I’ll be darned if it doesn’t make me want to drive all the way down to Presidio to take an outsider’s look at that world for myself. ( )