Taken by Robert Crais (2012 fiction)

I will think of Taken whenever I hear of Trump’s Mexican wall. This complicated thriller follows two super sleuths, Joe Pike and Elvis Cole, in their search for a pair of innocent young people who are swept up in a group of pollos. Pollos are illegal immigrants who travel under the control of coyotes and bajadores in a world of slavery, extortion, torture, death, and mass graves. Located in the desert of the US Southwest, people are treated like disposable commodities. The pollos include Mexicans, Guatemalans, Nicaraguans, and Koreans. They are packed into trucks, stored in houses made prisonlike and escape-proof, and eventually sold to expectant employers or family members. If not delivered, they die. The coyotes are criminals of every nationality, mostly American and Mexican. The bajadores are super-coyotes, prettying on anyone caught in their tentacles. Crais supplies a succession of independent scenes, a chain of deepening depravity offset by the forces of hope, represented by Pike and Cole. The plot does not flow, but zigs and zags, ever moving forward. The pace is cinematic, the climax inevitable but uncertain right up to the recovery of the innocents.

Reviewed by Martin Waldron