NO HORSE LEFT BEHIND

After writing this short story, I began to think about the political satire of Mark Twain.  If he were living today, I think he might write such a story as a commentary on the human condition in America. To read the story, click on "Short Stories" in the left column of subjects.

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THE GREYHOUND GUNSLINGER 

I think most readers will also enjoy The Greyhound Gunslinger, which precedes "No Horse Left Behind."

This story needs no explanation.  It is not an exercise in roman a clef but it is a vignette based upon a character I once actually knew.  In a sense, he might have been afflicted with that false self image of success that I have alluded to in the tenor of the story mentioned above.  But it is best to leave the psychological analyses to the readers.  To read this story, click on "Short Stories" in the left column of subjects.

What is the best way to tell the truth about the U.S./Mexico border? 

It is sometimes too shocking, and it tarnishes too many souls to tell the "real" truth in non-fiction books. Those books are for the delusional by the delusional and written within the confines of commercial political correctness. 

Mark Twain once said, "Only the dead are allowed to tell the truth," referring to his rejected story, The War Prayer.  The most truthful non-fictional story of the border patrol was told by Clifford Allen Perkins, (Title: The Border Patrol) a border guard before and during the Mexican Revolution up through the end of Prohibition when most agencies involved in enforcing Prohibition were corrupt, including some Border Patrol stations.  It was not published until Perkins was in his 90s.

BorderDrama.com and The LeCroy Press has the objective of enlightening the public aobut the tragic breakdown in immigration law enforcement and other border crime issues on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border through entertaining fiction novels, short stories, and essays.  Some are based on actual experiences of the author as a former border guard and private investigator.

See the list of novels on the right and in the "Book Titles" section.

What's New?

Published January 3, 2009 and currently for sale through Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble and other major booksellers:

1. The Border Body Dumps

Copyright 2009, The LeCroy Press

This book is not for the squeamish or the shrinking violets of the world.  It is a graphic story of the brutal violence along the U.S./Mexico border, and in particular the one between El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico. 

Actually, there are three types of "body dumps" in the isolated areas in and around Juarez, Mexico.  The first might be called "traditional."  These dumps are the sites where warring drug factions sometimes bury turf rivals, snitches, uncooperative cops, low ranking Government fucntionaries and other victims of the drug wars.  Some of the graves are not so isolated; in fact they are sometimes found in the backyards of drug traffickers who live in the suburbs of Juarez. Some of these bodies have been decapitated and may not be buried at all, but hung like grotesque trophies from bridges and overpasses in Juarez to serve as warnings to rivals in the drug trade.

A second type of "body dump" is usually just that: an isolated place where female bodies are ignominiously dumped after being raped, murdered and sometimes mutilated.  They are victims of the mass kidnappings, rapes and murders of young, female, international factory workers in Juarez.   Archaic terms have been revived to describe the crimes: "femicide," or sometimes "feminicide."

The second type of body dump, described above, has spawned a third type which is the vera causa of this story. 

Olga Travetti, a beautiful, yet tough, private investigator from Spain, a former Interpol operative, has been hired by a recondite group of women activists in Mexico City and given a free hand to use her own resourcefulness to stop the murders of the young women and restore a semblance of dignity to Mexican border women.  To assist her, Olga first hires a burned-out former border guard, Ross Spencer, a struggling El Paso investigator. Later, she hires Rocio Davis, a street wise native of Mexico  who is an Iraq War widow, plenty tough in her own right.

Ross Spencer quickly accepts Olga's lucrative offer to be her associate and hone his skills as a private investigator. Too late, he learns that Olga and Rocio both have some serious issues to settle with macho-driven border men.  Led by Olga, and enthusiastically endorsed by Rocio, he soon realizes he is an accomplice  in establishing the third type of body dump--a type reserved for those who victimize young women. 

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Sample Dialogue

"Some of our assignments, if not most, will invetiably require that we both be women," she said.

"You mean I gotta go in drag?"

"That's a crude and cynical way of putting it, Ross, but you will have to dress as a woman sometimes...."

"A man could get seriously killed that way."

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(For synopses of other book titles and short stories, click on the appropriate title in the upper left column.)