Iron River — T. Jefferson Parker

T. Jefferson Parker ranks among the very top tier of contemporary crime writers, and his new series has received some of the most effusive reviews of his already stellar career. In L.A. Outlaws, Parker introduced Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy Charlie Hood, plunging him into a glamorous, fast-moving world of antiheroes-and antiheroines. In The Renegades, Hood was ensnared in a major case of police corruption. BookReporter.com raved: And while, again, The Renegades is complete in itself, my gut feeling is that with L.A. Outlaws and a future novel, it will form a trilogy that will stand as the high-water mark of Parker's work. In the meantime, a year seems too long a time to wait to find out. The wait is over. Iron River is here.

This time around, Hood is running the California-Mexico border with the ATFE, searching for the iron river-the massive and illegal flow of handguns and automatic weapons that fuels the bloody cartel wars south of the border. Gunrunners by nature aren't exactly ethical, but the lengths they'll go to, and the innocent lives they'll risk, are shocking even to Hood. Most shocking of all is the close personal connection Hood finds wrapped up in events south of the border-a connection that shakes him to his core.