Cruz

May 1, 2022

Tom�s Cruz's abusive gangster father is imprisoned, followed by Tom�s's older brother Seba, who was forced to assume his father's obligations. With a cartel boss holding his wife and child as collateral, Tom�s himself must now join the business. A Dashiell Hammett finalist from a leading Argentine author.

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2022
Set in northern Argentina, this grim crime novel from Ferraro (Dogo) centers on law-abiding Tomás Cruz, son of an infamous underworld thug, who can’t escape his family’s legacy of criminality. Fifteen years earlier, Tomás father, Samuel, was incarcerated for 13 years and upon his release deserted his two teenage sons. Now, Tomás’s beloved older brother, Seba, a criminal just like Samuel, has been arrested for possession of drugs and needs his brother to inherit his debt to a drug lord. This debt, Tomás learns, is a dangerous assignment to smuggle 50 kilos of cocaine out of Paraguay across the Paraná River, which is teeming with cops and Argentinean border police. With the lives of Seba’s wife and daughter at stake should he fail, Tomás must adopt the ruthless instincts of his loathsome father to make it out alive. Crude prose and wanton violence hamper Ferraro’s hellishly bleak story, but the liberal volleys of gunfire and high-voltage action do drive it to a suitable conclusion. This is a gory treat for fans of hard-hitting gangland thrillers. Agent: Tom Wickersham, Wickersham Agency.

August 1, 2022
Ferraro's first novel to be translated into English shows the disastrous costs a favor for his older brother exacts on an Argentine innocent. Arrested for the possession of marijuana with clear intent to sell, Sebastian Cruz has just one request of his brother, Tom�s: keep his family safe. Of course he will, volunteers Tommy. But since Seba's wife and schoolgirl daughter have been taken hostage by the drug lord whose deal the arrest disrupted, that turns out to be a monstrous responsibility. Tommy's always prided himself on being "a different kind of Cruz." Now he'll have to get his hands dirty with exactly the sort of dangerous and illegal transactions that made him turn away from his father, Samuel, when he was sent to jail himself half Tommy's lifetime ago. And when complications prevent him from completing the deal as planned, he'll have to improvise in ways that make him horrified of himself. As he finds himself shockingly immersed in the dealing, pimping, and betrayals that have been a way of life for the other men in his family, Tommy has to ask himself whether he really is such a different kind of Cruz. With every step he takes further into the conflict between Anibal Di Pietro, the gang leader who worked with Seba, and his rival Centuri�n, Tommy, who's amazed "how much you can lie to yourself," must confront ugly truths about his father, his brother, and the Cruz in the mirror. Strong stuff for readers who think Don Winslow's portrayals of drug cartels didn't cut deep enough.

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Starred review from October 15, 2022
Cruz's first book to be published in English strips the gangland novel to its gruesome core, leaving only men and women trapped in a vicious, bloody cycle of revenge and ever-escalating horror. Tom�s Cruz had hoped to escape the criminal life that entrapped both his father and older brother, Seba, but when Seba is arrested following a botched drug deal, it's left to Tom�s to finish the job or put his loved ones in the crosshairs of drug lords. His task is to do what Seba failed to do: smuggle a large shipment of cocaine out of Paraguay to northern Argentina. But that's only the beginning. It quickly becomes clear that the only way Tom�s can save his and Seba's children is to enlist the help of the father he despises, a much-feared thug whose capacity for inflicting mayhem is legendary. This unlikely father-son wrecking crew works its way through sundry foot soldiers on the way to a confrontation with the man pulling the strings, leaving body parts and rivers of blood in their wake. Much to his disgust, Tom�s, the so-called ""Little Cruz,"" turns out to be his father's son in more ways than he ever thought possible. Ferraro's portrait of a crushingly bleak hellscape where ""hope and torture are the same word"" is unremittingly violent, but he writes about that world with unabashed realism, breathtaking power, and a narrative ferocity that never lets up.

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