Be the Cool Kid Who Reads the Book First, Then Watches the Series: La Fronter Saga by John Scheck

 Purchase La Frontera Saga , by John Scheck.

 

Attention Netflix, or Amazon Prime, or Hulu: Here's your next hit series. La Frontera Saga's simple, yet insanely relevant premise could be the stuff of legend, and maybe even affect real change in a violent world where terror and murder and anarchy reign supreme--in this case the Mexican drug trade.

Diego is a cool, urbane, and yet bold Spaniard raised in the egalitarian Spanish society where violent crime is relatively non-existent, where there's little violence despite having the largest illicit drug trade in Europe because of its many beach resort towns to which millions of Europeans flock in search of fun, sun, and nightlife decadence where drugs are consumed so profligately. Spain's social-democratic economy has leveled the playing field enough that abject poverty is rare, as it is typically in abjectly poor places where violent crime springs. Despite the fact Spain's drug trade is extensive, there's little or no violence attached to it.

Diego hustles in Benidorm, one of Spain's hottest coastal resort towns, selling drugs and also providing luxury accommodations for those who can afford such things. In the course of his hustles he befriends vacationing (or exiled) Mexican narcotraficantes, one of whom is the most powerful drug lord in all Mexico as the head of the Sinaloa cartel, who sends his family to Benidorm for vacation and even manages to abscond himself to the city for some down time.

Diego befriends this man enough to posit a bold and brilliant plan on how to revolutionize the Mexican drug trade by both reducing the insane volume of murder and mayhem and also "spread the wealth" to the impoverished millions in Mexico, social-democratic style, using the vast wealth of the cartels acting as the government agent in leveling the playing field.

There's much more to La Frontera Saga than this. Although it has high-minded idealism at its core, it never presents this message sanctimoniously, nor does it dilute the entertainment value of the story. There's plenty of superbly drawn-up characters and plot lines to keep the reader obsessed with finishing every page with great gusto.

What makes the novel work is that Scheck's high-minded idealism is a truly realistic adventure as told throughout the story. It never falls into the tired old tropes about the Mexican drug trade, nor does it present the same dark and cynical view that "nothing ever changes," that if you live in Europe long enough, you realize that its egalitarian, social-democratic cultures (Denmark, France, Germany, Spain, et al.) all sprung, slowly and with great pain, from the abject lowest of low. For instance, Spain created this amazing culture after emerging from years of fascist rule that made it one of the poorest countries in Europe; today it isn't perfect in Spain, but her people live well, safe and prosperous, and with little signs of the massive wealth divide seen in Mexico, and certainly without the insane violence and unbridled criminality in that country.

My point being, it is entirely possible to affect change. European social democracies sprung from first unequal societies dominated by royals, then in some cases fascists and other failed forms of self-governance and bad economic policies, and anyone living in these countries today can clearly see how far they've come the last 70 years. Why not do the same in Mexico? Someone just has to have the visionary ideas and boldness to make it happen, then to convince the people it is in their best interest to be more altruistic and cooperative. That is Diego Valverde. And he's thinking big to transform Mexico.

I read this book so fast, and with such enthusiasm, that I lost an entire Saturday finishing it in one long read where I only paused to eat--and, you know, answer nature's calling. Other than that I read it constantly from end to end. Now how do I get people at Netflix, Hulu, et al. to get onboard? We have the next hit series.

 

- Goodreads review from Mr. Cool