Book Review: Choke Point

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

Choke Point     Amazon US HC Amazon Canada HC
James C. Mitchell
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Thriller   Hard Boiled
Series: Brinker P.I.
St. Martin’s, Oct 2004, $23.95, 272 pp.

A riot broke out at a college football game leaving a Hispanic man dead. The next day April Lennox informs PI Brinker at his Tucson office that the victim was a whistleblower who contacted her about wrong doings in Nogales, Mexico. She asks him to accompany her on a visit to the deceased’s mother to see if she can provide some light on what her son knew. Brink says no and not long afterward, April’s sexually abused body is found in Nogales.

Brink feels guilty that he failed to talk her out of going and not accompanying her. As a former border patrol agent, he has contacts on both sides of the law and borders, which he uses to track April’s movements. He learns she was killed in Nogales and her death and that of ten other victim ties to the Mexican factories using cheap labor. Brink’s friend visits the mother and finds that her son was pressing for better working conditions at the Amistadt office. Brink feels an obligation to obtain justice for April by capturing a killer and his employer.

The protagonist uses a drug dealer and that man’s associates in Nogales to assist him in his efforts to provide justice to the victims as Brink believes the end justifies the means. The law means nothing to his unknown enemy so Brink adapts the same game theory leading to quite a border thriller. James C. Mitchell takes his audience on quite an eye-opening borderlands’ experience with the action-packed CHOKE POINT crime thriller.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner