BRUJO - Thomas Laird

BRUJO is a Jimmy Parisi Thriller that involves a murderous trafficker of underaged girls kidnapped off the streets of Ciudad de Juarez. He goes by the name of Brujo, which is Spanish for ’warlock’, and he runs a gang called Satan’s Apostles. They also deal in smuggled cocaine from Mexico. But Francisco Chamuco (Madeira) skims two girls from each truckload, and he brings them out to his farmhouse west of Chicago near Geneva, Illinois, and rapes, tortures, and horribly murders them.

Jimmy Parisi and Doc Gibron of Chicago Homicide catch the cases of the so-called ’Jane Does’, the nameless street girls who wind up dying by Chamuco, as Madeira is also known. They suspect him early, but Madeira is sly, like most ’planned’ serial killers. Madeira also kills a black prostitute and has an ex-lover killed by his crew members.

Parisi is known as a ’bulldog’, and once he attaches himself to a case, he just won’t let go. The novel ends in an unexpected twist.