South (Charnes)

South 
Lance Charnes, 2014
Wombat Group Media
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780988690332


Summary
Luis Ojeda owes his life to the Pacifico Norte cartel. Literally. Now it’s time to pay.

Luis led escaping Muslims out of the U.S. during the ten years following a 2019 terrorist attack on Chicago. He retired after nearly being killed by a border guard. But now in 2032, the Nortes give Luis a choice: pay back the fortune they spent saving his life, or take on a special job.

The job: Nora Khaled—FBI agent, wife, mother of two, and Muslim. She claims her husband will be exiled to one of the nation’s remote prison camps to rot with over 400,000 other Muslim Americans. Faced with her family’s destruction, she’s forced to turn to Luis—the kind of man she’s spent her career bringing to justice.

But when the FBI publicly accuses Nora of terrorism, Luis learns Nora’s real motive for heading south: she has proof that the nation’s recent history is based on a lie—a lie that reaches to the government’s highest levels.

Torn between self-preservation and the last shreds of his idealism, Luis guides Nora and her family toward refuge in civil war-wracked Mexico. The FBI, a dogged ICE agent, killer drones, bandits, and the fearsome Zeta cartel all plan to stop him. Success might just free Luis from the Nortes...but failure means disappearing into a black-site prison, or a gruesome death for them all.

In a day-after-tomorrow America where government has been downsized and outsourced into irrelevance, and none but the very wealthy few can afford hopes or dreams, Luis and Nora must learn to trust each other to ensure the survival of the truth—and of the people they love. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1960
• Where—Oakland, California, USA
• Education—B.A. University of California, Berkeley; M.S.,California State University, Long Beach
• Currently—lives in Orange County, California


Lance Charnes has been an Air Force intelligence officer, information technology manager, computer-game artist, set designer and Jeopardy! contestant, and is now an emergency management specialist. He’s had training in architectural rendering, terrorist incident response and maritime archaeology, but not all at the same time. His Facebook author page features spies, archaeology and art crime.

Lance is the author of the international thriller DOHA 12, the near-future thriller SOUTH, and the DEWITT AGENCY FILES series of international art-crime novels. All are available in trade paperback and digital editions. He's also a frequent contributor to Macmillan's Criminal Element website. (From the author.)

Visit the author's website.
Follow Lance on Facebook.

Book Reviews
South is a riveting work of action/adventure suspense that is a real page-turner.... Lance Charnes demonstrates a truly impressive knack for deftly creating a complex and thoroughly engaging story.
Midwest Book Review


South is a compelling futuristic thriller, as convincing a cautionary novel as Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale was in its day...these were real people forced to live in terrible times, and I was only too happy to cheer them on—or cry over their tragedies.
Criminal Element


Charnes creates characters you can understand and care for. The action scenes in South make you feel as though you are a participant.... South is a brilliantly conceived and executed thriller.
William Brooks, author of Black Karma

Discussion Questions
1. Is Luis a criminal? Why or why not? Do you think it’s possible to do the right thing for the wrong reasons, or the wrong thing for the right reasons?

2. Bel says to Ros, “I just can’t fight anymore” (p. 22, paperback edition). Discuss the various ways that Bel finds to continue fighting, despite her words. Why do you think she refuses to help Ros?

3. Discuss Nora’s relationship with Paul. Who do you think is the dominant member of their household, and why? Take into account that in every instance where they disagree during the story, Nora defers to Paul.

4. Place yourself in Nora’s position. If you learned what she had, what would you have done? How much—if anything—would you risk to bring the truth to light? Would you ask a criminal for help if you needed it?

5. Is McGinley a hero, villain, or some of each? Is he a good law-enforcement officer? Do you approve of his methods? Why or why not?

6. Who was your favorite character, and why? Who was your least-favorite character, and why? Who was the strongest character, and what made them seem that way to you?

7. Do you think anything like the Terrorist Detention Program (South’s network of prison camps in the western U.S.) could actually come about? Why or why not? Given the provocation—the terrorist attack on Wrigley Field that killed thousands—would you support or oppose a real-world TDP? Would you do so publicly?

8. South’s America has become a poorer, less healthy, more brutal and less secure place than it is today. However, it has also achieved full employment, has a booming industrial sector and is an energy exporter. Is this a good tradeoff? Would you want to live there?

9. Newport Beach—a wealthy real-world beach community in Orange County, California—has become a walled, gated enclave in South’s world. Do you think similar cities would opt to isolate themselves from their less-well-off neighbors if allowed? What effect do you think that would have on (a) their residents, and (b) their neighbors? Can you think of instances where this has already been done?

10. Small drones are sold today in electronics stores and on the Internet. Do you have any interest in owning a drone? If you had one, what would you do with it? Would you object to your neighbors owning a drone?

11. Do you think the amount of cultural change required to generate the social and economic conditions seen in South could occur in the next twenty years? Why or why not?

12. How strong a role does religion play in this story? Other than the obvious (Nora’s predicament), how does it manifest itself?

13. What other aspects of South’s reality would you have liked to hear about, but weren’t included in the story? Given the conditions of the book’s world, how do you think these bypassed issues would work?

14. Real-world gunfights tend to be messy, confused actions, frightening to both participants and onlookers, in which far more shots miss than hit their targets. Did the author portray this reality effectively in the action sequences? Do you find this preferable to the usual Hollywood depiction of gunfights, and why/why not?

15. Consider the various fates of the principal characters. Which ones ended up the way you expected? Which ones had outcomes different from what you expected? If you could change one main character’s fate, whose would it be, what would you change, and why?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)

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