The Janes

Review by Booklist Review

PI Alice Vega is nothing less than an utterly compelling protagonist in her second case (after Two Girls Down, 2018), which resumes her remarkable partnership with fellow PI Max Caplan. As Max says, you don't get any more off-the-books than Alice, and her throttle is wide open when the duo is invited to join the investigation when two teenage Latina Jane Does are found dead in the San Diego area, one with a scrap of paper bearing Alice's name clutched in her hand. Alice and Max follow a trail with some suspicious cops and a shady DEA team that eventually brings them up against Mexico's biggest cartel boss. The victims were just two of many the drug lord transported to the U.S. on his immigration railroad tunnels big enough to drive tricked-out Smart cars through. Alice is determined to rescue the rest of his girls and wields her weapon of choice, a nasty pair of bolt cutters, against anyone who stands in her way. Both Alice and Max take a beating or two, looking more and more like animals swiftly moving from the endangered column to the extinct. Max is subject to a savage electrocution. Alice is stabbed, although that does not deter her from the occasional headstand meditation, in bandages. A somewhat Shakespearean ending satisfies with triumphant women standing strong on a stage littered with battered villains.--Jane Murphy Copyright 2019 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

What starts as a straightforward, if extremely challenging, assignment--figuring out who killed two barely teenage Latina Jane Does and dumped them in the San Diego, Calif., area--quickly turns treacherous for PIs Alice Vega and Max Caplan in Luna's gripping sequel to 2018's Two Girls Down. Brought in by SDPD Cmdr. Roland Otero to investigate under the radar, the pair get an early break from forensic evidence that not only offers them an angle into the case but strongly suggests that the girls were being sexually trafficked. When the partners swiftly identify a prime suspect, Otero bafflingly thanks them for their efforts and asks them to stand down. Which is the last thing that pit-bull-focused Vega is about to do, plunging the now-rogue team into a perilous sprint to stay one step ahead of the ostensible good guys as they race to unravel a plot as dark and twisted as one of the tunnels the bad guys use for smuggling between Mexico and the U.S. Though the fast and furious action sometimes stretches credulity, in marked contrast to the gritty realism of the rest of the novel, this dynamic duo rates a long run. Agent: Mark Falkin, Falkin Literary. (Jan.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

In this follow-up to the YA author's widely heeded first adult novel, Two Girls Down, the bodies of two young women are found outside of San Diego. They carry no identification, and no one seems to be looking for them. Suspecting human trafficking, the police and the FBI turn to unorthodox private investigator Alice Vega (with partner Max Caplan). Topical chills from a rising star.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A former police officer and a for-profit vigilante reunite to fight crime and corruption on the southern border.Divorced ex-cop Max "Cap" Caplan is on the verge of accepting a full-time PI position with a Denville, Pennsylvania, law firm when he receives an email from bounty hunter Alice Vega: She'll pay him $10,000 if he'll join her on a job in San Diego. Even though his last collaboration with Vega (Two Girls Down, 2018) imperiled both him and his teenage daughter, Nell, Cap drops everything and hops a plane to California, where he learns that he and Vega will be working as off-book consultants for the Drug Enforcement Administration with assistance from the San Diego Police Department. Both agencies suspect that two murdered Jane Doesyoung Latinas with almost sequentially numbered IUDswere being trafficked for prostitution but are too busy dealing with Mexican drug tunnels to investigate. Despite having received pledges of full support, Vega senses their employers are hiding something, and her suspicion is confirmed when the pair uncovers a lead and gets kicked off the case. Undeterred, Cap and Vega redouble their efforts to find any remaining women and bring everyone involved to justice, consequences be damned. Luna delivers nearly 200 pages of by-the-numbers mystery before launching headlong into an intricately plotted, adrenaline-fueled conspiracy thriller. The stakes escalate as the odds against Cap and Vega mount, ratcheting up tension and intensifying drive while developing the characters. In contrast with her debut, Luna this time develops the burgeoning attraction between empathetic Cap and Jack Reacher-esque Vega, resulting in a series duo with legs.Luna's latest entertains while subverting gender stereotypes and confronting the politics of immigration. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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9780385545518|excerpt Luna / LAST COUPLE STANDING 1 meet our girl: seventeen, arrived here a year ago from a rough and dusty town in Chiapas, considered pretty by most standards because she is young, her face unmarked by scars or wrinkles, her body boasting the tender snap of fresh muscle. Our girl's brain, on the other hand, is at war with itself and others: with memories of her mother's worry and her father's pain, subtle with her own simmering meditations on sex and violence, with fear of all the men that come through the door with their eyes so stark and full of want it's like they've eaten her up before they've even selected her from underneath the butcher's glass. Our girl walks in bare feet, unsure if she is dreaming. Her dreams these days are collisions, collages, bursts of fire and color that all start normally enough--­she is playing paper dolls with her sister on the porch under the umbrella with one panel missing, or fluffing up yellow rice in a pot right after it's done steaming. But then they turn; the dolls become scuttling cockroaches in her hands; the rice bowl fills with blood; her own teeth grow into blades and shred her tongue to streamers. The house is divided, two floors: the ground floor, where she and the other girls sleep on towels side by side in the bedroom they share, and watch TV and wait in the living room; and there's downstairs full of boxes that pass for rooms--­no windows, no air. The working rooms. Then there is the garage, which is separate from the house, but there are no cars inside. There is just a table and some machines and tools. Our girl hasn't been there yet but this is what she's heard. Only girls who cry and act stupid are taken there and our girl keeps her head down and does what she's supposed to do. She doesn't ask questions and doesn't make trouble, but she watches everything. She avoids the bosses. Coyote Ben is easy to avoid because he comes and goes, although when he's around and there's no work he grabs the hair at the back of her neck and whispers in her ear. He speaks English so she doesn't really understand everything he says, but she knows he doesn't expect her to respond. He lets her make the drinks. Fat Mitch is always there, and he's got the gun on a belt that looks like it's strangling all the fat on his stomach. He has named the gun, Selena, after a singer, and he is always reminding the girls the gun is there. He'll say things in Spanish like "Selena got a lot of sleep last night and wants to have some playtime today." And then there's Rafa. Rafa is the one who takes the girls to the garage. Fat Mitch tells them Rafa only does what he does because he has to, but our girl doesn't buy it. She knows Rafa does it because he likes it. It's not like on a farm when they make the runtiest worker shoot and drown the sick animals to toughen him up. The house may be a farm but Rafa's no runt--­he's bigger and stronger than Fat Mitch, and our girl has heard he smiles when he does what he does to the girls in the garage. That is what they get when they act stupid. Our girl's not stupid, and she stays away from the stupid girls: Isabel, Chicago, Good Hair. They cry and try to steal food. Stupid. The girl called Maricel is new, one of the girls from the city, and while it's usually not a good idea to get to know the new girls, our girl actually likes her and Good Hair both. In another time and place they may have all played card games and shared secrets about boys in their class. Instead they wait to be picked. Which is better than the alternative. If a girl doesn't get picked from the TV room for a month, she's out, not taken to the garage--­out out, out of the house and dropped somewhere in the desert because she's not worth the Wonder bread. Our girl has learned a little English here and there from TV. She pays attention to the American news. Police, homicide, catch, release. She watches a news show about a boy who looks her age, and Mexican too, but American. She tries to wrap her mouth around a word the newswoman keeps repeating, which sounds like something about a duck flying up. Duck-­ted. Up-­duck-­ted. The boy talks to the newswoman, points to a picture of a fish tank. Then there is another woman, not the newswoman; 2014 it says in the corner. Her name is at the bottom of the screen. Our girl notices: American first name, Mexican last name. She looks like she is police. Or a lesbian. Or a gangster. She wears black clothes and sunglasses. Back to the boy. Over and over he says the same thing: "She safes me, she safes me." Our girl watches the boy's top row of teeth, the way they scrape his bottom lip as he cries. The word is not "safes." It's "saved." "She saved me," the boy says, again and again. Our girl watches Maricel get up close to the TV. Maricel doesn't take her eyes off it. The boy on the screen says, "She saved me. Alice Vega, she saved me." Maricel begins to cry, along with the boy. Our girl watches her and realizes her own hands are shaking. Our girl has a thought out of nowhere: you treat us like dogs; we're going to act like dogs. A map unfolds in her mind, square by square. She saved me, the boy says. She saved me. Excerpted from The Janes: An Alice Vega Novel by Louisa Luna All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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