Alex Segura is the maestro of Miami noir. He explores the multilingual, multicultural turf of South Florida, the heart of the Cuban-American “exilio”, a kind of offshore capital of Latin America. It’s full of pride and tenacity, melancholy and creativity, intrigue and mystery. When I go there, I feel instantly at home: the food, the music, the effortless cultural border-crossing that people engage in on a daily basis. And the fact that the nice lady who pours café cubano at the airport speaks to me immediately in Spanish. When you read Dangerous Ends or other Alex Segura novels, you’ll see how well he knows and describes his fascinating world. And you’ll realize what the great Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa meant when he told me in an interview that Miami embodies the future. Alex and I had an epistolary conversation recently about the parallels and shared interests in our fiction. It’s always a pleasure to talk to him. He was gracious enough to write an introduction and put it together for CrimeReads. Read.

Here’s a useful list of books from The Dallas Morning News about a much debated, poorly understood, perennially divisive subject: the border. Triple Crossing is among them…Read.

I recently participated in a discussion at the Hudson Institute in Washington with José Grinda, a Spanish anti-corruption prosecutor who is one of Europe’s foremost experts on Russian organized crime. This hopefully offers some useful background for those trying to follow today’s loud and politicized debate about Russian-U.S. relations. Watch.

And here’s a ProPublica article about the topic last year. Read.

Like the previous two novels, Rip Crew has been published in France by Liana Levi, a great publishing house. Françoise Buillot did the excellent translation. The French title is Trafiquants & Associés (Traffickers & Associates), an impressive solution to the challenge of translating a border law enforcement/underworld slang term. Here are a few reviews…   Liana Levi press page. Telerama.  Baz-art.