Review by Booklist Review
Jimmy Burns, reformed pyramid plunderer and relics salesman, now in the salvamento business (that's salvage, not salvation), vowed long ago to work alone. And while life may move slowly in his adopted home of Merida, Mexico, he is kept busy buying stale cakes for his elderly neighbor, running into his former girlfriend, and breakfasting with the other gringos--painters, unfortunates, bad and good poets. But when his friend Louise tells him that her brother, Rudy, has disappeared, and that she fears he has been picked up by the extraterrestrials he claims to be investigating, Jimmy reluctantly sets off for the City of Dawn to find him. He is joined by Gail, an anthropologist who has deserted her dig; Refugio, a salvager and a gentleman; and Doc, an ancient anthropologist who fears this will be his last venture into the forest. Though Gringos smacks of others in the south-of-the-border genre (e.g., John Nichols' Milagro Bean Field War), Portis, author of True Grit, flings more fact than fancy. But the wit is similar--dry, offhand, and notable: after using his shotgun to permanently dispatch a troublemaker, Jimmy reflects, "I wasn't used to seeing my will so little resisted, having been in sales for so long." ~--Eloise Kinney
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A wild and woolly, offbeat ride through a quicksand Mexican-American mindscape, Portis's ( True Grit ; Norwood ) latest saga features Jimmy Burns, an idler from Louisiana transplanted to Mexico, where he ekes out a living finding missing persons and doing odd jobs. Equally odd are the other motley expatriates. Ninety-pound Louise Kurle, who's writing a book about benign space dwarfs, suspects her missing husband, Rudy, was abducted by UFOs. Big Dan, a paunchy ex-con guru/white supremacist/kidnapper, poses to his band of deranged hippies as El Mago, the wizard whom the Mayas predict will appear at the end of time. Murder, adventure and Indian lore animate a Mexico aswarm with New Age mystics, kooks, skinheads, graduate students, maverick archeologists and looters of shrines. For all these doings, the story doesn't really go anywhere, and Portis's uprooted dreamers and schemers here have a tiresome sameness. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Portis's 1991 comic novel follows protagonist Jimmy Burns, who has expatriated to Mexico to live a quiet existence. Enter a female stalker, Mayan tomb-robbing archaeologists, UFO hunters, and a group looking for psychic happenings. Good, quirky fun. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Portis's latest combines the same hard-boiled goofiness and swift storytelling that make his earlier books (Masters of Atlantis, 1985, etc.), so enjoyably original. This one's a sweaty intrigue, set south of the border, that toys with cosmic themes, only to reduce them to their deservedly comic size. The expatriate community living near the Yucatan includes all kinds of kooks, dypsos, and schemers. The only sane and stable gringo here seems to be the somewhat mysterious narrator, Jimmy Burns, a self-described ""lugubrious bore"" who fancies himself ""the very picture of an American idler in Mexico."" Though Jimmy's past as a looter of antiquities (""recovery work"") continually catches up with him, he now survives on odd jobs and light hauling. But much like Travis McGee, he also salvages lives, especially the many good-hearted, empty-headed spiritual pilgrims who hope to find the mysteries of the universe revealed among the Mayan ruins. Burns's irregular friends include Louise and Rudy Kurle, two ufologists interested in discovering evidence of prehistoric space travel; Emmett, the often-married old-timer desperately seeking a cure for his physical ailments; Minim, a retired pro bowler who now writes sports poems; a few psycho vets; and Doc Flandin, a wealthy old Mayanist still at work on his masterpiece, a survey of Meso-American civilization. When a lot of New Age hippies as well as some nasty dopers start bumming through town, Burns gets wind of a secretive ceremony to be held at a remote ruin. Is it just more silly talk of harmonic convergence? Of a visit from the little people? Or is it to be a scene of sacrificial violence? Always on the look-out for US runaways, Burns spots one in the company of an evil ex-con who leads a bunch of Mansonesque crazies toward the ancient site. Burns's arrival down river not only spoils the wacky celebration, but he also saves a few lives in a notvery-funny bloodbath. He even solves the mystery of the sudden surge of local madness, all of it traceable to a few articles in an obscure UFO bulletin. The double-talk of the cultists is expertly filtered through Portis's lean and muscular prose, and the plot's as tight as a blood-swollen tick. All in all, totally boss fiction. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
