“No writer in America today can be said to surpassButler in the eating-his-cake-and-having-it-too category: He’s literary and entertaining, serious and funny. Within his clear and fluent narratives, there usually nestles complexity, if you care to look for it.” —South Florida Sun-Sentinel

In The Hot Country, Christopher Marlowe Cobb (“Kit”), the swashbuck­ling early-twentieth-century American newspaper war correspondent travels to Mexico in 1914, during that country’s civil war, and the contro­versial presidency of Victoriano Huerta, El Chacal(The Jackal). Covering the war in enemy territory and in the sweltering heat, Cobb falls in love with Luisa, a young Mexican laundress, who is not as innocent as she seems.

One day the intrepid war reporter soon witnesses a priest being shot, but the bullet ricochets off the cross the holy man wears around his neck and leaves him unharmed. Cobb employs a young pickpocket to help him find out the identity of the sniper and, more importantly, why important German offi­cials are sneaking into the city in the middle of the night from ships docked in the port.

An exciting tale of intrigue and espionage, Butler’s powerful crime-fiction debut is a thriller not to be missed.