Murder City
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Review
"(A)n impressionistic yet immensely powerful narrative of brutality, corruption and hopelessness."
--The Guardian
--The Guardian
Product Description
In "Murder City", award-winning writer Charles Bowden presents a devastating chronicle of a city in collapse. It begins in January 2008 when a handwritten list appears on a Juarez monument to fallen police officers. Under the heading 'those who did not believe' are the names of five recently murdered cops. And under the heading 'for those who continue not believing' are seventeen names. A few days later their bodies start to appear. But in Juarez, it is not just the police and drug cartel members who die; the violence infects every level of society. With hallucinatory prose and piercing detail Bowden reveals the lives of its residents: Miss Sinaloa, a raped beauty queen whose spiraling madness reflects that of the town that has consumed her; Emilio, a reporter who made the mistake of writing the truth and must now flee north for his life; El Pastor, a born again Christian who runs an insane asylum in the desert; and, the chilling sicario, or hitman, who has dreamt of his own death while whispering the secrets of his trade. As Bowden interweaves these stories into a broader meditation on Juarez's descent into anarchy, he reveals a city made by two countries and two histories, and takes an axe to Mexican and U.S. government and media myths of the war on drugs. In Juarez the war is for drugs; the police and the military fight for their share of the profits; the press is restrained by the murder of reporters; and, the line between the government and the drug cartels has never existed. 'In this new way of life, no one is really in charge-and no one is safe', writes Bowden. 'The violence has crossed class lines. The violence is everywhere. It is like the dust in the air, part of life itself'. Heartbreaking, disturbing, and unforgettable, "Murder City" establishes Bowden as one of our leading visionaries working at the height of his powers.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
Bowden strives so hard for literary power that he forgets that he is essentially a journalist - he doesn't let the protagonists of this tragic story speak for themselves.
I think AManuboy has hit the nail on the head in his review. This book could have been redeemed -partially at least - by many more interviews.
I think AManuboy has hit the nail on the head in his review. This book could have been redeemed -partially at least - by many more interviews.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I found this book to be repetitively dull and lacking any depth-it's basically a tedious listing of people murdered in the sphere of drug trafficking in one city.It lacks continuity;I was looking for a some factual insight for the huge number of killings.It's vague and repetitive,and although the details of the deaths are relentless we never get an insight into the why's and wherefores.We have to wait until page 148 where an interview with a sicarrio(assassin) takes place and this is interesting but everything else prior and post is not.
The gist of the book is the police were taking backhanders from the drug lords,then they were ousted by the army and all with the backing of the government.
I might have made an intelligent guess at that before picking up the book.
I read on hoping it would improve but I was disappointed.
The gist of the book is the police were taking backhanders from the drug lords,then they were ousted by the army and all with the backing of the government.
I might have made an intelligent guess at that before picking up the book.
I read on hoping it would improve but I was disappointed.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
47 reviews
82 of 85 people found the following review helpful
A vitally important but disturbing book
13 April 2010
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
If the angels ever visited Juarez looking for the proverbial one good man, I'm afraid they'd either be kidnapped, murdered, or probably both before their search was over.
In his dark, non-fiction novel, Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields, Charles Bowden takes you by the hand and gives a guided tour of one of the lower hells that's just across the border from El Paso, Texas.
On your journey through this third-world dystopia, you travel to an impoverished insane asylum out in the desert ran by El Pastor, who collects from the streets of Juarez those whose lives were shattered by torture, drugs, gang rape, and a host of other horrors. From there you'll visit the "death houses" where underneath floors and patios the anonymous dead wait to be found. You'll cruise the streets at dawn to find the bodies bound with silver and gray duct tape at hands, feet, and mouth, deposited the night before. You'll also meet a sicario, an assassin, who speaks of his childhood, his time in the Mexican state police and the FBI academy, and finally his plunge into "the life" where he has since racked up over 250 murders becoming a highly sought after "murder artist".
At each point on your journey, Bowden stops and makes you look, he makes you bear witness as he has done for almost 20 years, to the unacknowledged, unreported disintegration of not only a city, but of an entire country.
From the nearly ubiquitous corruption in all branches of the Mexican government, military, and police forces to the members of drug cartels living like kings surrounded by grinding poverty to American factories paying starvation wages, Bowden drags it all into the light for us to see.
This book does not pull any punches: While Murder City is a vital, important work, it's also a dark and disturbing read. But throughout it rings true.
Charles Bowden has opened my eyes to a world I could never have imagined prior to reading Murder City.
Take the ride.
In his dark, non-fiction novel, Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields, Charles Bowden takes you by the hand and gives a guided tour of one of the lower hells that's just across the border from El Paso, Texas.
On your journey through this third-world dystopia, you travel to an impoverished insane asylum out in the desert ran by El Pastor, who collects from the streets of Juarez those whose lives were shattered by torture, drugs, gang rape, and a host of other horrors. From there you'll visit the "death houses" where underneath floors and patios the anonymous dead wait to be found. You'll cruise the streets at dawn to find the bodies bound with silver and gray duct tape at hands, feet, and mouth, deposited the night before. You'll also meet a sicario, an assassin, who speaks of his childhood, his time in the Mexican state police and the FBI academy, and finally his plunge into "the life" where he has since racked up over 250 murders becoming a highly sought after "murder artist".
At each point on your journey, Bowden stops and makes you look, he makes you bear witness as he has done for almost 20 years, to the unacknowledged, unreported disintegration of not only a city, but of an entire country.
From the nearly ubiquitous corruption in all branches of the Mexican government, military, and police forces to the members of drug cartels living like kings surrounded by grinding poverty to American factories paying starvation wages, Bowden drags it all into the light for us to see.
This book does not pull any punches: While Murder City is a vital, important work, it's also a dark and disturbing read. But throughout it rings true.
Charles Bowden has opened my eyes to a world I could never have imagined prior to reading Murder City.
Take the ride.
41 of 45 people found the following review helpful
Compelling and worthwhile
3 April 2010
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
At the time I am writing this, there was only one other review, which gave the book a two-star rating. After finishing the Kindle edition,I have to say that I feel the other rating is unfair. At first I agreed with the other reviewer- and I had really wanted to like this book, after hearing a very moving interview with the author on NPR. The narrative in the beginning feels disjointed, and I found the constant references to "Miss Sinaloa" to be annoying. But stay with it, the book draws you in. As I read farther, I really began to understand how "Miss Sinaloa" is a metaphor for the City; she is beautiful, but insane and terribly damaged. And, in the end, the Author's imagining of an "Our Town" type play with the Sinaloa murder vicims as characters moved me to tears. I don't know if all the readers will agree with the author about some of the underlying reasons for the murders, but the book is interesting, provacitive- and worth reading.
28 of 31 people found the following review helpful
AMAZING AND TERRIFYING!!!
5 April 2010
Format:Hardcover
Wow Mr Bowden's book floored me, I couldn't put the thing down I finished it in about 3 days. I imagine some people will have problems with Bowden's style, he writes about his experiences in a non-linear way sometimes repeating small fragments I believe the style reinforces the chaotic life he experienced in Juarez. Instead of trying to give us the who's who of cartels and connections Bowden's premise is that the killings are illustrative not of a break down of society but of a new form largely without rhyme or reason. This book is about the future and the ability of people to live with the world collapsing around them. Excellent highly reccomended!
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