Minerva Koenig

FICTION
Minerva Koenig
South of Nowhere: A Mystery
Minotaur Books
Hardcover, 978-1-250-05195-0 (also available as an ebook), 304 pgs., $26.99
February 2, 2016

SPOILER ALERT: This is the second in a series. Proceed at your own risk.

Julia Kalas begins refurbishing an old farmhouse when she finds a dead body under the floorboards. That might be simply inconvenient for most people, but Julia is a recovering former criminal, a target of the Aryan Brotherhood, and was recently kicked out of Witness Protection (see the first book in this series, Nine Days.) So when a PI acquaintance asks for Julia’s help on a missing-person case that would necessitate a trip to the border, she figures it’s a good time to get out of town for a while.

John and Julia hit Ojinaga (across the Mexican border from Presidio, Texas) looking for the missing woman. There is no shortage of suspects: The cartels are legion and omnipresent, three hundred women have been disappeared in and around Juarez, and there’s a hinky plastic surgeon in the mix. Julia and John find their quarry, but nothing is as it seems. After a near-fatal attack leaves John permanently disabled, it’s up to Julia, with the help of her erstwhile man-friend Hector, to make things right.

Minerva Koenig’s South of Nowhere is a thoroughly entertaining mystery in the timeless tradition of the classic hard-boiled detective genre. Think Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, starring a likeable if unconventional antiheroine. Now set the whole shebang in West Texas where the air is “dry as a saltine cracker.” It’s quite a combination.

South of Nowhere features a complicated plot that might get tangled in lesser hands, but Koenig’s execution is nimble and near flawless. The action is fast-paced and expertly placed. The narrative is unexpectedly rich for the genre, laced with philosophy and psychology, Freud and the Buddha, economics, politics, the gender wars, and lots of local color.

Koenig’s characters are also more complex than typical genre fare. There are anti-cartel vigilantes in the Sonoran Desert, Tohono O’odham feminist warriors, and morally challenged Buddhists on the border. Julia has always relied on her “radar,” a kind of sixth sense, to give her an advantage. But lately it seems the radar may be malfunctioning, her cat may or may not have spoken to her, and it’s possible she has a death wish. Hector is a Bolivian pinko fond of conspiracy theories who is probably wanted by the CIA. This is how you send up with sentences like “The wedding ring might have fooled the monks,” Julia tells John, “but you and I clock about as married as Margaret Thatcher and Cesar Chavez.”

Koenig’s style is distinctive, paying homage to past masters but with a Texas twist that is all her own. A bit of dialogue between Julia and Connie, a woman who once tried to kill her:

Connie: “You and me, we’re the same. We’re like dogs that have been kicked too much. We’re only dangerous when somebody tries to hurt us.”

Julia: “I’m no dog.”

Connie: “If you weren’t at least part dog, you’d be dead by now.”

The multiple conclusions are satisfying and chilling, and they set the hook for book number three. South of Nowhere is an original and elegantly trippy package.

Originally published by Lone Star Literary Life.… (altro)