The Hot Country

This man knows how to tell a tale and an exciting tale it is. It is 1914 and Mexico is wracked with war. Revolutionaries including Pancho Villa and Zapata are attacking Federal troops and dividing up the countryside as the reigning politicians cower in Mexico City. Christopher Marlowe Cobb,a reporter for a Chicago paper, is covering the landing of U.S. troops in Vera Cruz. The troops are there ostensibly to keep the Germans from flooding the country with arms and ammunition, but also to protect American interests such as the oilfields that are not far north of Vera Cruz. Cobb is a veteran war reporter having reported on the fighting in Greece, the Balkans, and other hot spots around the world. He is quick to note that the U. S. troops show more are content to occupy Vera Cruz and have no intention of invading deeper into Mexico. Cobb will have to find a new angle on the news if he wants to keep his editor happy. In fact he finds two stories. One involves a beautiful senorita who can shoot the nose off a government official from across the plaza and has a burning passion to join Pancho Villa's revolutionaries. The other story involves the German ammunition ship anchored in the harbor and the stiff German aristocrat who clandestinely disembarks from the ship in the middle of the night. Cobb follows the German from the docks to the German consulate and then onto a train departing Vera Cruz for the middle of Pancho Villa's rebel controlled territory. It's like following a lit fuse into a powder keg, but Cobb is determined to get the story and maybe help his country at the same time. Loaded with action and good storytelling, with a few good twists thrown in to keep things stirred up. This not only makes a good book, but would be a good action movie. This book provided by Amazon Prime and the well read folks at The Mysterious Press. show less

The Hot Country Robert Olen Butler

I loved this book!! From the opening sentences I was transported to the era of the Beats and when Tallahassee Slim was introduced I was walking alongside Kerouac again!
Clearly this is the work of an experienced writer who knows how to work and please his audience. I note that Mr. Butler is a Pulitzer Prize winner so he must be good!! And for me, he is.
If you like your swashes being buckled then this is the book for you. Page turning skirmishes of credible violence. But it wasn’t just blood and thunder there was an elegance to the form and style of the prose and the development of the characters that was simply so satisfying to read. It is an intelligent adventure story with enough diversity within the show more core of the story to keep attention and interest alert. In fact there is so much in the book that works alongside the basic tale. A treatise on relationships at several levels from filial, to lust, to love, to loyalty, to compassion.
My fear for a novel such as this is that it may be overlook as just an historical tale of intrigue and war but it has so much more depth than that. Thank you to Mr Butler for writing this and as always thank you to Real Readers for allowing me to possess it! show less

The Hot Country – Great Historical Adventure

The Hot Country by Robert Olen Butler is another Christopher Marlow Cobb “thriller” which according to The Washington Post is ‘A thinking person’s historical thriller’ and part of the literary thriller genre. Never have literary thrillers actually been that thrilling and the same can be said of The Hot Country. If this is a thriller then I am up for the Noble Prize in Literature next year. This is a good historical adventure which in places is stodgy but in others a gloriously written adventure.

Christopher Marlow Cobb is a war journalist who is in Vera Cruz, Mexico it is 1914 and Europe is teetering on the edge of war when a German boat drops anchor in the bay not far from a show more couple of American frigates. It is not the invading American’s that stir Cobb’s curiosity but a German official who comes a shore and is hidden away in the German consulate. Why would a German be interested in Mexico when the storm clouds are gathering over Europe?

To find out more Cobb has to assume the identity of a German so that he able to follow the German to his destination without raising attention to himself. He knows that the German must be heading out to meet the Mexican rebel leader Pancho Villa but what will he be offering, arms or money possibly both? While on the train journey the service is held up by Villa’s bandits who rob the train and Cobb is taken with them when he bumbs in to a double agent he knows.

He manages to earn Pancho Villa’s trust, finds out the German’s plans and decides to get back to America as quickly as possible to write the story of his life. Somehow the story gets spiked but means Cobb has to return Mexico and meet with Villa.

This is an old fashioned adventure story based on historical fact with everything you expect, blood, lust, money and the US of A coming to the rescue. Well written the prose flows on the pages sometimes it over elaborates but that is my personal opinion. This is a good book for all those that enjoy a historical adventure but it is not a thriller. It is still a pleasure to read, even if you cannot overlook the fact that the Americans are the heroes and revolutionary leaders are backwards fools and the Germans are not much better. At times the imagery this book invokes had me thinking of John Wayne and other western heroes of the silver screen. show less

I have made a huge discovery. Robert Olen Butler's debut crime novel. He is already a Pulitzer Prize winner and a National Magazine Award winner. He's written many novels, collections of short stories, and nonfiction, but I'm so happy he's turned to crime fiction in this period piece set in Mexico in 1914. The atmosphere, the characters, all told me so much about a historical time and place I knew little about.

His hero is Christopher Marlowe Cobb, a journalist who is in Vera Cruz in 1914 when the Americans have occupied the city but there is a mysterious German ship in the harbor which is said to be full of munitions. Cobb is the son of a famous actress and singer who raised him alone, and he has inherited enough of her acting talent in show more addition to his natural writing talent that he's an unusually effective journalist for a Chicago newspaper.

In Mexico, as he spends days and nights trying to figure out what the Germans are up to, he hires a local boy to keep watch for him, and his photographer/friend Bunky also helps him. They discover a German man in a suit being rowed to shore in the middle of the night. He goes to the German consulate. Now to find out who he is and what he's here for. Meanwhile, the Americans seem to be oblivious, concentrating on cleaning up the city by collecting garbage in their efforts to make the Mexicans like them - a lost cause.

Cobb meets a musician in a German band who is actually an American spy, and when the man is killed, Cobb finds himself in serious trouble. He sets off to Pancho Villa's camp by train to put a stop to a nefarious plot against the U.S. and Mexico both. There is a love interest as well but it plays a small part in the story as you follow Cobb's adventure.

Since Cobb is a thoughtful person and as a journalist a great observer, you get a beautiful picture of 1914 Mexico and some of the characters, like Pancho Villa, who were important in that time and place. I was especially fond of the boy Cobb hired, a brave little boy trying to earn or steal money to feed his mother and siblings.

Recommended reading.
Source: Amazon Vine show less

An OK debut. His sequels are better, but this one sets the stage for the ongoing storyline. My interest lagged in the middle of the story, perhaps the book is a tad too long?

Christopher Marlowe “Kit” Cobb is a Chicago reporter who goes to Veracuz to report on the Mexican civil war. As part of his investigation he ends up chasing German agent Friedrich von Mensinger, which leads him to Pancho Villa’s camp and his side of the revolution.

The story has potential to be exciting and a true western adventure but the author uses long sentences and a slow narrative style which makes it bland and uninviting. Christopher Cobb is torn between his journalistic duties, which take him deep into the Mexican civil war and Pancho Villa’s campaign and his long distance correspondence with his mother, so the story feels a bit disrupted in places. The storyline between the German spy and his intrusion in the Villista show more side of the revolution was interesting but the author managed to make it a small part of the overall plot and I felt it needed more explanation and development.

I probably would not recommend the novel as I found it a bit bland and slow going but it has good reviews from other readers so I’m sure it will be enjoyable for other people. show less

The "Hot Country" is quite an exciting story, by Pulitzer Prize winning author Robert Olen Butler. The protagonist and narrator is Christopher Cobb Marlowe, a reporter for a Chicago newspaper. Veracruz Mexico, 1914. Bandits rule Mexico and fight each other for control of the country and the Presidency. The Germans have sent a shipment of arms to gain a toehold in the hemisphere. The US sends forces to prevent the ship from unloading its cargo. An incredible cast of characters - the bandit Pancho Villa, mercenary cowboy Tallahassee Slim, laundress Luisa or is she a sniper, the German emissary, an aeroplane pilot??? a mother who is an entertainer (?) on New Orleans Basin St., and in the background Woodrow Wilson. Lots of tension show more throughout, great interviews with very well done set-ups. Apparently, the first in a series. I always looked forward to picking up this book. Sorry its finished and can't wait for the next one. Five stars ! show less