In the Mouth of the Wolf

A Murder, a Cover-Up, and the True Cost of Silencing the Press

By: Katherine Corcoran

Narrated by: Gigi Saul Guerrero

Bloomsbury presents In the Mouth of the Wolf by Katherine Corcoran, read by Gigi Saul Guerrero.

Shortlisted for the Juan E. Mendez Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America

“Chilling and nuanced … a murder mystery but also, more important, a portrait of a nation where no one knows what to believe, or whom to trust."—Mark Bowden, The New York Times Book Review

"Epic ... deeply reported and riveting."—NPR Online

Former AP Mexico bureau chief Katherine Corcoran’s pulsating investigation into the murder of a legendary woman journalist on the verge of exposing government corruption in Mexico.

Regina Martínez was no stranger to retaliation. A journalist out of Mexico’s Gulf Coast state of Veracruz, Regina's stories for the magazine Proceso laid out the corruption and abuse underlying Mexican politics. She was barred from press conferences, and copies of Proceso often disappeared before they made the newsstands. In 2012, shortly after Proceso published an article on corruption and two Veracruz politicians, and the magazine went missing once again, she was bludgeoned to death in her bathroom. The message was clear: No journalist in Mexico was safe.

Katherine Corcoran, then leading the Associated Press coverage of Mexico, admired Regina Martínez’s work. Troubled by the news of her death, Corcoran journeyed to Veracruz to find out what had happened. Regina hadn’t even written the controversial article. But did she have something else that someone didn’t want published? Once there, Katherine bonded with four of Regina’s grief-stricken mentees, each desperate to prove who was to blame for the death of their friend. Together they battled cover-ups, narco-officials, red tape, and threats to sift through the mess of lies—and discover what got Regina killed.

A gripping look at reporters who dare to step on the deadly “third rail,” where the state and organized crime have become indistinguishable, In the Mouth of the Wolf confronts how silencing the©2022 Katherine Corcoran (P)2022 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Excellent read

A great delivery of a difficult subject. I also learned a lot about Mexican politics, culture and history as well

A Brave Reporter

Katherine Corcoran is a brave reporter, risking her life in what she portrays as a corrupt, lawless and dangerous Mexico to determine who killed Regina Martinez, another investigative reporter. Corcoran is smart and relentless in pursuing the truth, and you can’t help but admire her. But much of the book left me discouraged, almost despairing. The government officials and their henchmen (and women) are too brutal, too quick to murder any reporter who might expose their schemes. The death toll of journalists just keeps mounting, year by year. The main hope is that there are always more courageous journalists, native Mexicans who are patriotic and loyal enough to risk their own lives in search of the truth. One drawback was the plethora of Mexican names, unfamiliar to me, which made it hard to remember which person was which.

Mixture

The story is very instructive if you want to be a reporter or detective. Wow what a slog. But all the minutia makes it hard to keep up. Needed a strong editors hand. However I learned a TON about MX politics. Worse than I knew. The narration IS bad. So many mispronounced words! An important story. Reporting is hard. I learned that.

Fascinating

It’s horrendous that things like this happen in this day and age. I hope this is one day resolved, but I don’t think that’s realistic to expect. Corcoran does a good job telling a cohesive story that she’s only learned in bits and pieces.

Terrible narration

This was an interesting story that was ruined by a terrible narrator. Listening to it was like hearing each word pronounced completely without reference to any of the words around it - I don't just mean the mispronunciation, I mean the nonsensical and arbitrary emphasis on seemingly any syllable or worse the reader feels, regardless of the sentence structure. It is nearly painful to listen to, for a native English speaker (as the author is, and as I am, but as the narrator evidently is not). I cannot recommend this.