Lili Wright

This book centers on the collection and sale of archeological artifacts of Mexican origin. Ancient masks are the focal points and the holy grail of these is Montezuma's funerary mask. The main character (Anne) goes to Mexico to find these masks for her elderly father in the states. We meet a wide array of characters including a looter, an underworld lord and other shady characters. This is a cutthroat world and there is violence and murder. A crucial issue to think about is whether artifacts should remain in their home countries or taken to rich countries outside. This is a good readable but perhaps a bit overlong.… (mehr)

Lili Wright’s Dancing with the Tiger is long on setting and atmosphere. Set in Mexico, the novel uses the country’s mean streets, its belief in mysticism, and the ease with which so many of the country’s archeological treasures are smuggled across its borders, to create a thriller in which American mask collectors, a Mexican drug lord, and those wanting to keep Mexico’s treasures out of the hands of private collectors or foreign museums, battle for what might just turn out to be Montezuma’s actual burial mask. Wright, whose brief author’s biography says she has “studied Spanish, lived with Mexican families, worked as a journalist, watched dancing tigers parade down the streets, visited ghost towns, and started her own mask collection” puts all of that experience to good use here.

Anna Ramsey’s father, a well-known mask collector (and purported expert in the field) has just suffered a potentially fatal blow to his professional reputation, and Anna feels responsible for what happened. Daniel Ramsey’s latest book, for which Anna served as fact checker, has been exposed as wishful thinking on Ramsey’s part. In one fell swoop, both the book and a substantial portion of Ramsey’s collection are shown to be fakes, effectively destroying Ramsey’s reputation with museums and collectors around the world. Worse, Ramsey has turned to the bottle for comfort and can barely take care of himself, much less work on restoring his reputation.

So when Anna and her father learn that a meth-fueled looter has found Montezuma’s death mask, exactly the thing to restore Ramsey’s collection to its former glory, Anna knows what she has to do. Her father is too much into the bottle to be trusted with going to Mexico to purchase the mask from the looter; she will have to do it herself. Cash and her mother’s ashes in hand, and without telling her father that she is doing it, Anna heads to Mexico where she hopes to locate the looter and bring the Montezuma mask home. As it turns out, she will be lucky if she is able to bring herself home to her father, much less the mask he wants so badly.

And the race is on. Before it is over, the mask will have changed hands several times, people will have been tortured and killed in the most bizarre ways imaginable, and Anna will be wondering just how far she will have, or is willing, to go to attain the mask for her father. And that is where the novel becomes more a comedy of errors than the thriller it was intended to be. Anna is so reckless that she puts herself into one life threatening position after another with little thought as to the likely consequences but continuously walks away from the encounters with only a few bumps and bruises. The only thing saving Anna from her incompetence is the even greater incompetence of the bad guys chasing her and the mask.

Dancing with the Tiger is a fun ride a long way into its 453 pages, but eventually the reader begins to sense that its author is running out of pages in which to wrap up the chase and the book’s several side plots. And unfortunately, that is precisely what happens, leaving Wright with little choice but to resort to a series of short character summaries to explain the final destiny of each main character. That works – but it is akin to slamming into a wall at 60 mph. Not much fun.… (mehr)

A cross between Eat, Pray, Love and Indiana Jones with a little Maltese Falcon to guide the way. But without affection for Oaxaca (where the book's action leads): “The taxi wove through the ugly outskirts of the city, past cement factories, tire shops, empty lots of scrap metal, Small fires burned in forlorn fields and barbecue pits. It seemed incredible the mecca for Mexican folk art lay inside this clot of debris. Oaxaca.”

The dash after Montezuma's priceless mask is run by a mix of art collectors, a drug lord and his flunkies, flawed unsympathetic Oaxacan workers, chunky solid Virgin-worshiping Mexican women, an all-American meth addict treasure digger, the Oaxaca library for expats, and a hot artist for the heroine Anna to chase during after hours. Alcohol flows everywhere, especially into Anna--the new era woman taking it out on a bottle or two. The plot has more twists than a misguided pretzel. Oaxaca is sketched in dark, crazed, frightening colors. But I guess every adventure book needs a place that is not home, is alien, is forbidding, is exotic, and tingles with possible sex in some back room or cheap motel.

(For stories that love the city of Oaxaca and its peoples, take a look at the Santo Gordo Mysteries. Disclaimer: I wrote them.)

In re-gendering the male PI, author Lili Wright presents a self-doubting Anna, one unsure of herself—no swaggering detective is she—but Anna pushes hard, ready to dangle or use anything she has in order to get what she wants. Adding a hot female gaze to the swashbuckling adventure genre changes it forever.

I guess this is what it takes to sell.

BTW--Why not call it a jaguar? Why call it a tiger? The only tigers in Mexico live in zoos.
… (mehr)