The Rules of Wolfe

 

The Rules of Wolfe – James Carlos Blake

Overall, this one was rather a disappointment.  I stumbled upon this author on an Amazon special; he wrote a novelization of the life of Mexican Revolutionary Pancho Villa, and I really enjoyed that one. So I decided to sample more of the author’s work. I almost wish I hadn’t.

This is one of those books that may have been told better had it been a movie as opposed to a novel. There’s much more action here than there is any kind of story or character introspection. Even then, though, I can’t imagine this story as a movie possibly lasting more than 65 minutes without boring the viewer.

Eddie is a cocky young adult – still in his teenage years and has connections to a powerful family where he resides close to the Mexican border.  The family is involved in all kinds of illegal stuff but they “draw the line” at things such as drugs. Because of his youth and impatience, he bolts the family when he doesn’t get to partake in the business at the level he wants. He’s still a kid, after all. He ends up, instead, working as a security guard at the mansion of very high-level Mexican drug lord south of the border.   If you’ve watched enough episodes of “Breaking Bad” or “Better Call Saul”, you know that such individuals are definitely not to be trifled with if you value a natural death as painless as possible.   But being cocky, Eddie “crosses the line” with a very attractive female guest at a party at the mansion who happens to be highly connected to the drug cartel in a rather personal way.  The hired help aren’t supposed to do mingle with young, beautiful guests.

So Eddie and the voluptuous woman end up on the run; fleeing north towards the border.  Of course, Mexican drug lords have much more power and pull than the actual government of such a banana republic, so Eddie’s escape won’t be easy.  Fortunately, Eddie’s “family” north of the border have a bit of pull to where they can assist their young brash member.

Well, what I’ve described may sound like a good story, but it sadly is not.  Everything that happens is fairly predictable and not very exciting.  Maybe if you’ve seen one “couple on the run from powerful bad people” stories, you’ve seen them all.  Nothing really happened that really wowed me or held my interest.

It doesn’t help that Eddie’s “family” is quite large, and it became too much of a chore to keep all of the cousins, uncles, nieces, nephews, and associates straight in my head.  The author seems more interested in describing the natural surroundings of Mexico than he his about telling much of a story.  Yes, Mexico is hot, miserable, dusty, and barren.  We get it. We don’t need to read about it over and over and over again; especially when we don’t really read much about the characters that are supposed to interest us.

Well, I think I’ll pass on any other offerings by James Carlos Blake.  I really did like the “Pancho Villa” novel, but this one was too drab, impersonal, and mostly uninteresting.