Craig McDonald's "El Gavilan," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: El Gavilan by Craig McDonald.

The entry begins:

El Gavilan is my first standalone novel following four entries in the Hector Lassiter series.

The Lassiter books are historical thrillers. El Gavilan is a novel about illegal immigration and a single murder committed in an Ohio town grappling with waves of undocumented workers.

The time is now.

The setting is, by-and-large, a re-imagined version of my hometown: Call it Main Street USA spilling over into an adjacent metro area-become-a-barrio.

The book—and any movie that might one day be made from it—is a kind of mash-up of a western and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. It’s an oater with Dodge Rams and vintage Impalas set to a soundtrack of sad border ballads and narcocorridos.

The novel tracks the investigations and conflicts of three very different brands of lawmen and the small town reporter who covers their efforts in the local weekly newspaper. Moving between the cops and the journalist—binding them in some ways—is a pretty young “legal” named Patricia whose family owns and operates the town’s favorite Mexican restaurant.

Here’s my dream cast:

I favor actor Timothy Olyphant of Deadwood and Justified fame to play the book’s “hero” Tell Lyon, an ex-Border Patrol agent whose family was murdered by a vengeful cartel chief.

In the part of Tell’s uneasy ally Able Hawk—the county sheriff whose nickname supplies the book’s title—I envision Jeff...[read on]

Learn more about the author and his work at Craig McDonald's website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: El Gavilan.

--Marshal Zeringue