Wirecutter

Brizzolara makes his debut in a better than average adventure thriller that revolves around the illegal Mexican aliens who cut the wires of border fences to enter the U.S. Nathaniel York is a security guard at a San Diego topless bar. Narrating in a hard-boiled style that at times is imitative, but also crisp and convincing, he tells how he agreed to search for the brother of Juana, one of the bar's dancers. Herman has been missing since he told Juana he would soon sneak into the U.S. with a dangerous Tijuana smuggler of aliens. York's pursuit switches to a series of confrontations with a group of rich, gaudy Southern Californians who have an ominous secret to keep. Brizzolara conveys a vivid, although sometimes didactic, sense of the wirecutters' plight and their miserable lives on both sides of the border. He ends with a wild faceoff that is preposterous but will keep readers' pulses racing anyway. (February 10)