Rain Dogs

The year is 1976, and the first shots are being fired in the narcotics and human trafficking war that is still being waged today. Colt Freeman and his partner, known only as Snyder, want only to preserve their small piece of the marijuana trade. This modern-day Butch & Sundance ply their trade with proficiency and stealth. And, when necessary, deadly force.

Hundreds of miles away, along the border between the US and Mexico, a law-enforcement task-force patrols the desolate no-man's land that separates misery and prosperity, seeking to curb the unspeakable violence that feeds off the ever-growing river of humanity who find themselves at the mercy of the ruthless coyotes they have employed to guide them on their desperate crossing. Some distance further southwest, an elegant hacienda is nested behind the protective walls of an isolated ranch on the coast of the Sea of Cortez. Beyond those well-guarded gates, Miguel Zamora has placed himself at the center of a powerful circle of corrupt Mexican officials on the cusp of establishing ties with the Colombian cartels. Driven by avarice and steeped in paranoia, Miguel begins to seize control of his world with a singular and savage brutality that threatens to unleash a firestorm of bloodshed on both sides of the border.

Snyder and Colt decide to cash in on one last harvest, one final run down the coast before leaving their outlaw lives behind. But when their meticulously planned scheme comes undone, it forces them into a rash and hazardous escape from the law and directly into the crossfire of an internecine narcotics war that no one had seen coming.

With marijuana legalized in Washington State and Colorado, is it any wonder that the stoner crime novel continues to flourish? Birtcher’s contribution to the thriving subgenre, set in 1976, stars Colt Freeland, a laid-back Vietnam vet interested only in running his small pot business in the untamed forests of Northern California. But cocaine has changed everything, and, miles away, on the U.S.-Mexican border, the drug industry is taking a new and ugly shape, as Mexican dealers negotiate with Colombian cartels. Soon the new world is on Colt’s doorstep, forcing him to pull up stakes and attempt one last run to the Southwest. It all goes bad, of course, as that archetypal “one last job” always does, leaving Colt in the middle of a firefight between a double-dealing Mexican drug lord attempting to end-run the Colombians and the Colombians themselves. Birtcher combines a gritty, action-filled thriller with a nuanced, almost contemplative character drama in which Colt and a wealth of well-drawn supporting characters attempt to make sense of their places in a run-amok world. Thoroughly entertaining. --Bill Ott