Make Them Cry - by Smith Henderson & Jon Marc Smith (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

For fans of The Border and Jason Bourne, Make Them Cry is an explosive action thriller about a DEA agent sucked into a dangerous turf war on the US-Mexico border.

It's hard to make Diane Harbaugh flinch. A former prosecutor notorious for her aggressive tactics, she's now a DEA agent who interrogates witnesses so effectively, she has them confessing in tears. But when she hears from Gustavo, a high-ranking cartel member with an invaluable secret about the international black market, she's thrown for a loop. She heads to Mexico to meet him, and her entire understanding of justice and duty is thrown into question.

Gustavo sends her down a rabbit hole that leads to a criminal conspiracy more pervasive than anything she and the DEA ever suspected. She teams up with Ian Carver, a disillusioned CIA agent, and begins to unravel layers of deceptions, grifts, and schemes that date back to the beginnings of the Afghanistan War. As they learn more, they become the target of cartel assassins, embittered spies, and even their own government. They are at the center of an international manhunt with world-changing consequences--and the only way out is for Diane to do the one thing she promised herself she'd never do. Stylishly written and relentlessly plotted, Make Them Cry is an action-packed thriller of unimaginable stakes.

Review Quotes

"A kinetic new thriller. . . . What starts as a violent thriller flips over and becomes an examination of the aftermath of armed conflict, in which sorting the good guys from the bad is less about uniforms and codes and more about personal morality." -- Los Angeles Times

"Plenty of flaws in the main character but few in this satisfying thriller."
-- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"An intelligent, propulsive thriller. . . . Flawed, flesh-and-blood characters provide nuance and depth, and the authors' grasp of global politics is on full display. Fans of Don Winslow and T. Jefferson Parker will be enthralled." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Make Them Cry is one of those rare novels that is both artistically principled and marvelously fun to read, a combination of elegant, painstaking craftsmanship and suspenseful entertainment. If that were not enough, it is also a book that reaches into the reader's heart. It is not often that I can say, as I do now: I loved this novel." -- Tim O'Brien

"In their debut thriller Make Them Cry, Smith and Henderson burst onto the scene with muscular style, a blockbuster plot, and flair to spare. Intelligent, informed, important, humane, and remarkably witty, Make Them Cry arrives like a bullet train to your cerebral cortex...No doubt, Agent Diane Harbaugh, a bad-ass woman for our times, is here to stay and will take her rightful place alongside Bourne and Reacher before long." -- Ivy Pochoda, author of Wonder Valley and These Women