The Creed of Violence

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From Publishers WeeklyTeran's cinematic fifth novel portrays the 1910 Mexican revolution via the gun sights of an unlikely duo: Rawbone, a hardened smalltime assassin, and John Lourdes, a Bureau of Investigation agent. The two are thrown together when Rawbone is caught smuggling munitions from Texas into Mexico and Rawbone's lawyer arranges a deal: immunity in exchange for Rawbone sharing his criminal intel. A bargain is struck, with Lourdes assigned to accompany Rawbone into the Mexican underground. The twist: Lourdes, unknown to everyone but himself, is Rawbone's son. As the two men make their way through a snake's nest of smugglers, thugs and professional killers, Lourdes must suppress the angst he feels toward his father and focus on surviving another day. While this bit of dramatic irony quickly wears thin, father and son share a sharp wit, cunning instinct and thirst for adventure that make this spy mission the very definition of a thrill. Teran's fast-paced prose reads like it was written for the big screen (Universal scooped up the film rights), and even if the moralizing about U.S. foreign intervention gets heavy-handed, this remains an intelligent page-turner. (Nov.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. ReviewPraise for The Creed of Violence: "Boston Teran's The Creed of Violence is a terrific story and beautifully written. It works as a story about imperialism, and it's also a touching tale of fathers, sons and one very bad man's attempts at regeneration. But most of all it's exciting and tense and you'll probably read it, as I did, in one great sitting." —Robert Ward, author of Red Baker and Four Kinds of Rain “Teran’s considerable skills sneakily transform his characters, who use language like a concealed weapon. His Rawbone, a raconteur straddling the gutter between the old West and belle époque, is a Manila line braided with wit, cold-blooded efficiency, and a surprisingly expansive soul—a romantic cynic too wise to misinterpret derision for insight. The hallucinogenic epic he traverses with young John Lourdes produces one of the most exciting literary pairings since Fagin met Twist.” —Todd Field Praise for God Is a Bullet: “Ranks with Joan Didion’s The White Album . . . and John Ford’s classic film The Searchers.” —_The San Francisco Examiner_ “A millennial morality play . . . that might well have been written by William Blake [and] James Ellroy . . . if they’d all sat around with a few gallons of absinthe.” —_Dallas Morning Herald_ Praise for Never Count Out the Dead: “Cements Teran’s talent as a . . . virtuoso.” —_Publishers Weekly_