Melissa del Bosque is an award-winning investigative journalist who has written about the U.S.-Mexico border region for the past two decades. Her work has been published in international and national publications including Time, the Guardian, and Marie Claire. Her work has also been featured in television and radio on Democracy Now!, MSNBC, PBS, the BBC, and NPR. Currently, she is an investigative reporter with the Texas Observer and a Lannan reporting fellow with the Investigative Fund.

Joe Tone was most recently the editor of the award-winning Dallas Observer. He has written extensively about sports, crime, and immigration, among other topics, and has been honored for his investigative reporting, sportswriting, and narrative storytelling. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Village Voice, LA Weekly, and elsewhere. Tone holds a master’s degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. He was born and raised in Northern California, and now lives in the Washington, D.C., area with his wife and two sons. This is his first book.

9.24.2017

HISTORY / CURRENT AFFAIRS

Two Texas racing-racket titles finish in the money

By Carlton Stowers

Joe Tone

Bones: Brothers, Horses, Cartels, and the Borderland Dream

One World/Random House

Hardcover, 978-0-8129-8960-1 (also available as ebook and audio book); 329 pages, $28.00

August 8, 2017

Melissa del Bosque

Bloodlines: The True Story of a Drug Cartel, the FBI, and the Battle for a Horse-Racing Dynasty

Ecco/Harper Collins

Hardcover, 978-0-06-244848-4 (also available as ebook and audio book); 400 pages, $27.99

September 12, 2017

ßFirst, the good news: Award-winning journalists Joe Tone, former Dallas Observer editor, and Melissa del Bosque, a staff writer for the Austin-based Texas Observer, have, in their first efforts at lengthier projects, produced outstanding books on a subject that is fascinating, fast-paced, and frightening. Tone’s Bones: Brothers, Horses, Cartels and the Borderland Dream, and del Bosque’s Bloodlines: The True Story of a Drug Cartel, the FBI, and the Battle for a Horse-Racing Dynasty, expertly detail the money-laundering invasion of the Mexico-based Los Zetas drug cartel into the high-priced world of Quarter Horse racing. And they deftly chronicle the efforts of those who seek to end it.

From grotesque turf murders on the streets of Nuevo Laredo to the thrilling twenty-second dash for the million-dollar winner’s prize at Ruidoso’s All-American Futurity, the action is nonstop, so detailed the reader can smell the gunpowder and sweaty tensions that accompany smuggling tons of cocaine and cash into the United States. Then, there is the drama of high-dollar anticipations at racetracks and horse auctions. The authors have crafted engrossing tales that are part true crime, part sports, and wholly fascinating.

The dust cover blurbs and early reviews have generously praised both books.

Theirs is a multi-layered account of a bloodthirsty, power-hungry drug cartel laundering money through shell companies, innocent victims, race-fixing, and relentless intimidation. It is the American Dream turned dark and ugly, a modern version of history’s Al Capone–Elliott Ness days.

So compelling is the story that Hollywood has already come knocking at both authors’ doors. Universal Pictures has optioned del Bosque’s book (with Straight Outta Compton’s Jonathan Herman assigned to write the screenplay) while Anonymous Content (with The Bridge’s Mauricio Kats as screenwriter) has a deal with Tone.

Now, the bad news: Bones and Bloodlines have been published almost simultaneously, one in August, the other in September. One hopes there’s not a third lurking out there, being written by Pulitzer Prize winner Ginger Thompson, who first broke the story while a reporter for the New York Times.

Remember back when it seemed every journalist with a word processor had a contract to write a book on the infamous O. J. Simpson case? So flooded was the market that no one enjoyed blockbuster success. There was but one story to tell and just so much space on bookstore shelves. Bargin bins filled quickly. Some, in fact, say that the sweaty-palmed publishing world spent so much on O. J. books that it virtually killed a previously lucrative true crime genre.

So, what to do now about two highly entertaining books that have but one story to tell? The likelihood that hordes will pull out their American Express and purchase both is a long shot. How does the buyer, assuming he/she isn’t a close friend or relative on one of the authors, choose which of the equally deserving books to buy?

Your guess is as good as mine.

Though the authors deal with the same characters, same locale, same events, and time frame, there is a slight difference in their storytelling approach. In Bloodlines, del Bosque focuses the early stages of her book on Laredo-based FBI partners as they begin the tedious and frustrating effort to build the case against the cartel. Rookie special agent Scott Lawson, displaced from his Tennessee upbringing, and his more experienced female partner (she is given a pseudonym since she still has family living in Mexico) began working the case when no one else seemed particularly interested. The reader follows them every step of the way, learning of their unique bond and mutual determination. We early on realize that they, along with a courageous Texas horse breeder whom Lawson convinces to cooperate with the investigation, are going to be the heroes of del Bosque’s book.

Tone, on the other hand, chooses to focus early in his book on the Treviño family, two drug cartel–leading brothers in Mexico, Miguel and Omar, and innocent José, living in a Dallas suburb, working as a bricklayer until he’s drawn into the Zetas’ money-laundering scheme. The reader is well into Tone’s story before he becomes aware of the authorities’ interest.

As she offers great detail and a keen knowledge of border life, del Bosque’s style is fluid but more journalistic. At times, Bloodlines reads like a police procedural. Tone, meanwhile, often takes a cinematic approach, painting vivid descriptions of people, places, and events and often interjects historical asides, probing deeply into everything from a person’s family background to tracing the history of Quarter Horse racing back to Colonial times.

The bottom line, however, is that both books ultimately cover the same fertile ground, detailing how the money laundering works, showing how huge amounts of cocaine and cash make their way across the border, how lives are destroyed in the process, how the Quarter Horse industry is blindsided, and how authorities investigate such illegal activity. And, yes, by stories’ end the authors arrive at the same federal courtroom where matters are finally resolved.

So, call it a dead heat, a photo finish. This is no hedge. Both books are excellent, each a shining example of how thorough research combined with crisp and seductive writing can result in engaging nonfiction.

Regardless of which you choose, you’re not likely to be disappointed.

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