"Night Of The Jaguar," A Detective Novel Set In Sandinista Nicaragua

Dear S,

Thanks for thinking of me.

I was intrigued by Amazon's review of "Jaguar." What a fascinating plot!

Rings totally true.

Early in my Nicaragua sojourn, I was at a party with a Salvadoran guerilla who was laying low in Managua, doing the revolutionary equivalent of R&R.

He had a long history and gallons of blood on his hands. (You kill the first one... and then it gets easy.)

When I asked how he felt about the carnage in hindsight, he became very silent and very somber.

Most of us needn't look farther than our retirement funds to see how we are "all" invested in killing - General Electric, United Technologies,  Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrup Grumman, Boeing, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin.

I spent the last 15 minutes trying to learn who manufactures the Mark 77 bomb, a "new and improved napalm" still in the U.S. arsenal and used in Iraq/Afghanistan. During my search, I came upon lots of "technolese" but no reference to the war profiteer who actually makes this variant of hellfire and whose workers are thrilled to have a job. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_77_bomb

Napalm Still Used As A Weapon

https://www.thebalance.com/napalm-still-used-as-a-weapon-3345094

"Do War's Really Defend America's Freedom?"

(Homage To Marine Commandant, Major General Smedley Butler)

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/11/do-wars-really-defend-americas-freedom.html

Scare The Sheep 

And They Will Applaud Military-Industrial Profiteering

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/12/scare-sheep-and-they-will-cheer.html

The Military-Industrial-Banking Complex is so tentacularly interwoven I think we're all implicated.

Next time you're at a dinner party, try this: Ask people if they ever checked to see where their retirement funds are invested. 

Expect a lot of blank stares. 

We are loathe to watch "the butcher" do our dirty work.

Like Paul McCartney said: "If slaughterhouses had glass walls everyone would be vegetarian."

Pax tecum

Alan

On Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 5:03 PM, SV wrote:

Hi Alan, I was in the library yesterday browsing some featured thrillers. I picked up The Night of the Jaguar by Joe Gannon and read the jacket. It takes place in 1986 in Nicaragua and I thought of you. Below is the story from Amazon.

In Joe Gannon's debut novel, Night of the Jaguar, a former Sandinista guerrilla comandante turned cop investigates a series of murders that appear to be political executions.

Sandinista Police Captain Ajax Montoya is six days sober and losing his mind. How else to explain his nights waking in bed, his hand wrapped around that bloody-minded stiletto from the old days, or the presence outside his window, a face with no eyes watching him?

How far the heroic have fallen. Ajax was once the gallant comandante guerrillero. A hero of the Nicaraguan revolutionaries in their long uprising against the Ogre and his hated National Guard. Back then he'd been the guy who got the bloody missions -- as a lowly grunt with that blade, or the commander of an entire front. Back then he knew what was what and who to trust. But as the clarity of war gave way to the hazy reality of peace, Ajax fared less well. And after he took the fall for an assassination he had no part of, he tumbled into a bottle, and maybe out of his mind.

Now he's a homicide investigator in Managua solving murders and sweating through the nightmares from his guerilla days. When he's called to investigate a robbery turned gruesome murder, Ajax recognizes the marks of a surprising enemy - the CIA mercenary army known as The Contra. This isn't just a random murder; this is an execution, a call to war. Or is it? And why does no one want to know but Ajax? As the bodies pile up and a red-headed gringa who should be his enemy enchants his thoughts, Ajax questions whether he can stay sober, sane, and alive long enough to figure it all out.