Mexico Days

The ingenuous voice of the narrator, small-time drug dealer Louis Sanders, ameliorates the chilling aspects of Roper's macabre plot, which, by the end of the novel, leaves several of the principal characters dead. As the son of a famous racketeering lawyer, Sanders only gradually discovers his father's connection to the mob. Summers are spent in Mexico with his sister, Sylvia, and the twin daughters of his father's ``business partner,'' and a complicated emotional bond develops among the children. The girls later attend a Mexican convent school together, and Sylvia and one twin become members of a left-wing radical cell. Sanders, meanwhile, drops out of college and becomes a drug runner. When he's rounded up in a Mexican drug sweep and nearly killed, Sanders realizes how powerful his father's connections are. The end of the novel brings a chance for Sanders to avenge his father's death and prove himself a success for perhaps the first time in his life. After an 11-year hiatus, Roper ( Royo County ) has written an engrossing spellbinder which successfully explores its theme of how sins of the fathers are visited on the children. (Aug.)