James Carlos Blake is an
intriguing writer who focuses on the underworld along the Texas border in his
fiction and non-fiction. He’s written several fictionalized biographical
accounts of such notables as John Wesley Hardin, Pancho Villa, and Harry
Pierpoint of the Dillinger Gang. I discovered The Rules of Wolfe, the
second in his fictional family saga, about 10 years ago and have followed the
books ever since.
The Wolfe family is a large
far-flung group of people related by blood, marriage, friendship, and mutual
interest. They have established an extensive criminal organization in Texas and
in Mexico, well hidden by innocuous and diverse commercial fronts. Their most
recent adventure as documented by Blake, The Bones of Wolfe (Mysterious
Press, 2020), is positively frivolous compared to the previous entry The
Ways of Wolfe (Mysterious Press, 2017), which was a somber story of a
Wolfe gone astray.
In this outing Rudy and Frank
Wolfe, the family’s field investigators, i.e., enforcers, are assigned the task
of finding an illicit arms shipment that was hijacked by a rival gang and dealing
with the turncoat in the Wolfe organization who revealed the delivery details. In
the process of retrieving the guns, they also acquire an assortment of
pornographic movies, which they feel the need to review before passing on. A
member of the viewing audience sees a strong similarity between the star of one
movie to photos of a great-great-aunt who disappeared as a teenager and shares
that information with the family matriarch Aunt Catalina Luisiana Little Wolfe.
Aunt Cat never forgot her sister and wants badly to find her descendants, if
there are any. Everyone in the family is afraid of the formidable old lady, so
when she asks to borrow Rudy and Frank for a few days, everyone agrees to
release them from their current assignments. She gives them the task of finding
the actress and bringing her to Brownsville, Texas, so that Aunt Catalina can meet
her.
The plot is lighter than previous Wolfe tales and the writing is not as tight although the narrative is as propulsive and adrenalin-charged as ever. The signature shootouts with massive arsenals and high body counts are here, as are the deep family loyalties. Blake can stage a gunfight better than anyone else I can think of. Action-packed and violent, this thriller is a great addition to the Wolfe canon. I continue to be amazed that Blake is so little known. Recommended reading, especially for fans of Western thrillers.
Publisher: Mysterious Press
(July 7, 2020)
Language: English
Hardcover: 272 pages
ISBN-10: 0802156886
ISBN-13: 978-0802156884
Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2022
Aubrey Hamilton is a former
librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.
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