Marcus Sedgwick - Saint Death

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Hard work

I struggled with Saint Death.  I have enjoyed some of Marcus Sedgwick's books very much, but I didn't think this one worked very well.

This is a story of 24 hours or so in the life of Arturo, a poor man who lives, as so many others do, in a makeshift shack near Juarez on the Mexican side of the border with the USA.  Life is wholly dominated by two factors: drug cartels whose power means that there is effectively no law, so they murder, rob, rape and intimidate as they please, and the factories which produce goods for US corporations, based in Mexico because of low wages and non-existent employment rights.  The corrupting effect on everything is strongly portrayed; Arturo tries to remain honest, but becomes drawn into a darker world through loyalty to a friend in need of help.

It's a tough, bleak read, interspersed with quotations from people like Barack Obama, Noam Chomsky and others about the attitudes and economic forces which produce such places.  There is a story with characters whose fate is charted, but in many ways this is a political polemic as much as a novel, with Sedgwick's stance being largely summed up in this sentence: "Juarez is what happens when greed makes money by passing things across the border dividing poverty and wealth."  He excoriates the cartels, but also the rich people in the USA who keep them powerful by buying the drugs, and the US laws and corporations who exploit the poverty to increase their own wealth. 

Even though I think Sedgwick makes very valid and timely points, as a novel I didn't think this really worked.  It's more of a political cry of rage, really, and I found it pretty hard work to read.  Only a lukewarm recommendation, I'm afraid.

(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)