The Famous and the Dead

Charlie Hood, Book 6

By: T. Jefferson Parker

Narrated by: David Colacci

Length: 13 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy Charlie Hood is attached to the ATF, working undercover on the Iron River that flows across the U.S.-Mexican border. The diamond fillings he wears in his left canine glimmer, distracting the men who sell the illegal firearms that enable the unspeakable violence on both sides of the map. Spotting the sparkle when “Charlie Diamonds” opens his mouth is often their first step toward life behind bars.

Meanwhile, Bradley Jones, sheriff’s deputy and employee of the Baja Cartel and son of the love of Charlie’s life, the deceased L.A. outlaw Suzanne Jones, is expecting a son of his own. Suzanne was descended from famed Mexican desperado Joaquin Murrieta, whose embalmed head Bradley inherited from her and keeps nestled among piles of cash, proceeds from Bradley’s own life of crime.

Charlie knows all of Bradley’s secrets; the question is what will he do with the information. Until he decides, his obsession remains the inexplicable existence of Mike Finnegan, the diminutive devil who flits in and out of both men’s lives, knowing things he shouldn’t, seemingly immortal.

Three men - earnest law enforcer, inveterate lawbreaker, and the man who pits them against each other - hurtle toward one another in the jaw-dropping conclusion to T. Jefferson Parker’s mesmerizing vision of the border. Their climactic showdown brings to a spectacular close a crime series that obliterated the boundaries of the genre.

©2013 T. Jefferson Parker (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“The most groundbreaking crime series in decades.” ( St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

Dead-end for the series . . .

Any additional comments?

I love the author's previous work, but this book was disjointed and uneven. Every so often it would dawn on me that a key character had been ignored for several chapters and that the subplots seemed unrelated. Well-developed characters in previous books became almost caricatures in this book. Maybe the author has become disillusioned with the series or, for whatever reason, simply stopped at draft #2 instead of #3 or #4.

Ultimately the book tried to do to much and ended up doing nothing as well as I've come to expect from Parker. I'm not unhappy that I bought the book, but it is not nearly as good as others in the series. In the end, a book that was susposed to wrap-up the series sort of just killed it.