The Border Lords

At the start of Parker's adrenaline-fueled fourth thriller featuring L.A. sheriff's deputy Charlie Hood (after Iron River), Hood, who's still on loan to the ATF, and his ATF partners are watching a house in the border town of Buenavista, Calif., occupied by four young gunmen of the North Baja Cartel—and Hood's ATF agent friend, Sean Ozburn, who's operating undercover as a meth and gun dealer. When Ozburn goes rogue and fatally shoots the four cartel members, Hood knows he has to bring Ozburn in. Parker skillfully blends Hood's pursuit of the increasingly erratic Ozburn, who approaches a powerful cartel leader about buying the latest gun sensation, the Love 32, with that of L.A. deputy Bradley Jones, a man with connections both to Hood's past and the world of the cartels. The porousness of the U.S.-Mexico border and the ease with which guns, drugs, and killers pass back and forth is nowhere better illustrated than in Parker's white-hot series. (Jan.)