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Rating: 
Summary: Noir in sunny San Diego
Review: For those who remember names like Dewy Weber and Reynolds Yater from the early 1960's in Southern California and when a surf movie was a 16mm film shown at the local high schools by the producer/director who played a 78rpm record of the theme from Peter Gun for the sound track to Big Wednesday, this book will pick you up like the magic slip in a wave just caught.
But the book is not about surfing. It's about all the different kinds of pain endured by the poor and disposed--and just about everyone else, for that matter. Even the villains are real in their understandably cruel turn of heart and hand. The greatest hope is just getting through the day and success is breaking even--or close to it. Great causes -- whether it is the "Financial Miracle" of the Maquiladoras bringing toxic waste along with "good" jobs for the miserably poor or the idealistic crusaders who attempt to save those employed in the killing work environments--are presented as their own irony. (By a comparison not made by Nunn, the environmentally friendly and organically grown marijuana crop -- and its attending wealth for Mexicans choosing that particular line of work -- is far less hazardous than the virtually unregulated border factories owned by wealthy Americans, Asians and Europeans.)
The protagonist's father, a miserable SOB if there ever was one, comes to be seen as a human who was ruthlessly crushed and his regret is taken out on his hapless son and even more hapless people who cross the border to El Norte. Even a hired killer began his slide into evil because of a much greater evil that killed his infant son and poisoned his body and spirit.
The details of human degradation are summed up in his characterization of the women who work in the Maquiladores -- encouraged (by the threat of job loss) to wear fishnet stockings and spike heels to please their leering managers. The work is degrading enough and hard enough, but the added detail of the humiliation of the women shows that Nunn understands the minutiae of pain and the indifference to that pain.
However, this is not a dismal or boring read. It is written with verve and wit with a good (or even great) story and full characters. It is neatly woven, and I found not a single false move. So many best-sellers are slapped together with sloppy plots and cardboard characters, that this one stood out like a full moon on a clear night.
Throughout Nunn's work, there's the dark humor that reminded me of the best of Charles Williford and Jim Thompson. This was the first of his novels I've read, but it will not be the last.
Rating:
Summary: Cowabunga, rip and slash!
Review: Having surfed more than 40 years, nothing captures my interest better than a good story about riding waves. I just read this book on Cape Hatteras, NC while on vacation surfing waves generated by Hurricanes Alex and Charley. Still, it wasn't just my personal environment that made this book perfect. It woulda had the same impact if I'd read it in February in Montana. And never been in the ocean.
The novel will instantly stand as one of the Top Five all-time surfing stories. There is a terrific underlying current in the book, which non-surfers might neither understand nor be aware of. Mr. Nunn, defines his characters in an amazing way, using surfing's wide divide between old school (my style) and the new generation (my sons' outlook). Approaches to the waves are almost polar, even while the sport's inherent values and respect for tradition are from the same template.
On the surface, this novel also is a who-done-it thriller that shows Mr. Nunn is a genuinely exceptional writer who displays equal parts Elmore Leonard, Hunter S. Thompson, and John Grisham.
Intricate details, believeable characters, and conversational dialogue add up to a read that moves along as quickly and with as much unpredictability as a 20-foot storm wave.
Cowabunga, old-timers! Rip and slash, dudes! Either way, get up on it, and enjoy the ride.
Rating: 
Summary: Highly recommended, along with Nunn's other works
Review: Here's a compelling work of fiction by the dean of the "surf noir genre". Fiction though it be, this fine thriller of a novel is built on a foundation of solid research, shot through with truth and beauty aplenty.
Kem Nunn's previous "noirvels" include Pomona Queen, Tapping the Source, and The Dogs of Winter, the latter two involving core surf motifs.
In Tijuana Straits (named for his fictional reincarnation of the fabled Tijuana Sloughs borderland beach zone), Nunn ingeniously weaves a weft of real-world social and environmental threads into the warp of his plotted story.
And warped it is. The author has imagined and breathed into existence (oh, what lurid mouth-to-mouth that must have been!) the foulest, most violent and gratuitously repugnant creatures I have so far encountered in literature. And he actually had the gall to endow them with histories and nether-souls reminiscent of Dr. Frankenstein's lab experiments, so they're not simply crazed ghouls. I mean, they are crazed ghouls ... but not simply.
The novel is a synthesis of fact and fiction, as Nunn has assimilated and translated actual persons and events into his story of one-time surf great Sam Fahey and the activist Mexican woman who finds refuge on his Tijuana River valley worm-farm. Thus, Slough pioneer Dempsey Holder is resurrected as the legend ghost-surfer Hoddy Younger, while a fateful rescue incident is based on an actual day's work performed by larger-than-life Imperial Beach lifeguard Greg Abbott.
Nunn has done a magnificent job of research here, aided and abetted by such borderline denizens as Serge Dedina (of the Wildcoast International Conservation Team) and lifeguard/environmentalist Abbott. The author is a brilliant describer of situations, and the spell of this amazing book only begins to lessen in the last 50 pages, when plotlines seem to become a tad transparent as he moves towards wrapping it all up.
This book is a gas - a fun read and scary and hairy ride. I only wish it was about 50 pages longer, and that this extra length included one of Nunn's episodic voice-shifts, so we could share a final epiphany with Fahey upon the giant wave out past Third Notch at Mystic Peak. I wanted to be brought along on that ride!
If you're a surfer, you will find Tijuana Straits no doubt the richer; but, even if you're not, this is strong - methodically strong - stuff. Highly recommended, along with Nunn's other works.
Rating:
Summary: taut border thriller
Review: His dilapidated property, inherited from his homicidal father, resides near the TIJUANA STRAITS, but loner Sam Fahey never goes surfing at the renowned locale as he had when he was a teen. Instead the former jailbird earns a pittance as a worm farmer who cannot leave his land for the anxiety attacks cripple him when he tries.
Sam, tracking wild dogs, finds a battered Mexican woman. Though he prefers to avoid humans, Sam brings the assaulted female to his trailer. He learns that his "guest", twenty-three years old Magdalena Rivera, is an environmental activist working for a Tijuana attorney developing cases against major polluters. However, it is not her paying job that has placed Magdalena in danger, but her volunteer work at a clinic where she helped a severely abused woman with an abortion. This led to her drug-crazed husband Armando Santoya, wanting to kill her. Though his offspring was a victim of the pollutants that foul the border; he blames Magdalena for the loss and only Sam stands in the way.
Known for his surf Noir tales, Kem Nunn widens the horizon with this taut border thriller. Readers learn through flashbacks what turned Sam from a highly regarded surfer into a panic attack hermit; the audience finds out why Magdalena is a rabid clean air and water activist (the hypocrisy that America worries about free trade agreements leading to pollution is ironic); finally what motivates Armando to obsess over killing Magdalena. Though there is unnecessary violence (that seems to symbolize the writer's beliefs of the lawlessness of the California-Mexico border), the author shows he is second to none when it comes to readers riding a suspense laden crest.
Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: BUY IT!
Review: I only bought this book because of a short local review. It's the first time I have read anything by this author. I had a little trouble getting into it (to be truthful I didn't understand what he was writing about) but once I understood I couldn't put it down. Beautiful writing and a great story. I guess the best recommendation would be that I ordered two of his previous novels.
Rating:
Summary: Nunn's Best (Yet)
Review: I read TAPPING THE SOURCE when it first appeared because of Robert Stone's strong recommendation; and while that remains a great first novel, TIJUANA STRAITS is the full-fleshed work of an accomplished writer, and Nunn's best novel yet. A close cousin to Stone's DOG SOLDIERS, yet with surreal touches more reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy, this book just moves and moves. I was a 100 pages into I AM CHARLOTTE SIMMONS when I made the happy mistake of reading the first couple pages of TIJUANA STRAITS. I guess I'll go back to the Wolfe now, but somewhat regretfully. I agree with Drew Kampion that the plot becomes somewhat transparent near the end, and the denouement feels rushed, but the writing is strong and beautiful throughout. Nunn's images of Mexico are searing and villainous, and the handful of villains birthed by its toxic apocalyptic landscape are unforgettable. Plus he does that surf noir thing better than anyone.
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Summary: Tijuana Straits/Real LIfe on the Border
Review: In his magnificent Tijuana Straits, Kem Nunn picks up where Chandler and Ellroy left off--in the middle of the line that divides good and evil and life and death. Nunn gets the characters dead right and this third installment of his California trilogy brings together the crazies, ecologies and politics that makes Tijuana Straits a book that is Chinatown meets Amores Perros. There is a special intensity to the dust and metal fence that divide ways of life and the Mexico-U.S. border. Fahey and Dakota are real figments of the border imagination that Numm creates in this ode to California noir. Just as Dogtown and Z-Boys is the film companion to Tapping the Source, the Tijuana Straights is the updated companion to Chinatown--setting the tone for understanding how a place becomes a toxic stew of crime, immorality, and decadence. Serge Dedina, Author of Saving the Gray Whale, Executive Director, WiLDCOAST and lifelong resident of the border.
Rating:
Summary: A Transcendent Read
Review: Kem Nunn has produced another masterpiece. America's most underappreciated writer knows how to combine action with gravity, suspense with philosophy and he demonstrates it here with another great book. In "Tijuana Straits" Nunn not only creates Sam "the Gull," his usual pill-popping ex-surfer with one last chance at redemption, but also, with equal dexterity, Magdalena, the idealistic Mexican Madonna with a passion for social justice, and, most astoundingly, a fully realized, almost sympathetic villian, Armando, the dark shadow of toxic hopelessness. Add to these memorable characters Nunn's beautiful prose, seamless, swift plot and vivid setting and the result is a novel that satisfies on every level. If you want a transcendent read BUY THIS BOOK!
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Summary: Lost Hope
Review: This novel was gripping enough to get me painlessly through two days of waiting to serve jury duty. It occupies a place somewhere between literary and genre fiction. The writing is stronger than formulaic and the elegaic tone seems to match too well these pre-apocalyptic times. I grew up in San Diego in the 60s and early 70s. The main character, Fahey, seems like a stand-in for all our lost hopes as we careen toward enrivonmental jihad. Fahey may find some kind of redemption at the end. But I wonder if there's any left for the rest of us.
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