When Lee Gomez, a former Mexican government official convicted of murder, is sprung from a south Texas jail, the lawmen of Klail City have their hands full. No one is more concerned than Chief Inspector Rafe Buenrostro of the Belken County Homicide Squad, because criminals don't come much nastier than Lee and his drug-running brother, Felipe Segundo Gomez. Sometimes they do, though . . . as Buenrostro soon discovers when the younger generation of the Gomez crime family turns up, in the form of the elusive and extremely unpleasant twin brothers Juan Carlos and Jose Antonio Gomez. Buenrostro struggles to keep his cool as gunfire, explosions, and seamy sex heat up the already scorching Texas-Mexico borderlands. Halting the crime spree will require not only Buenrostro's own detective force but that of his official counterpart across the Rio Grande, Maria Luisa (Lu) Cetina of Barrones.