Amazon.com Review

An Amazon Best Book of October 2023: Fear Is Just a Word is a work of reportage so epic and so meticulous, its central story so devastating and vividly personal, that putting it down will be practically impossible for readers, not until the very last page. One evening in 2014, Miriam Rodríguez got an anguished call from her eldest daughter, informing her that members of the Mexican drug cartel known as the Zetas had abducted her youngest daughter, Karen. A native of a Zeta stronghold—San Fernando, Mexico—Miriam had fought tooth and nail for Karen’s life years before—in a Houston hospital ward—and now she fought for it again, becoming part vigilante, part detective, part constitutional lawyer, and all avenging angel. A heartbreaking account of one mother’s stand for justice in a world gone mad, as well as a painful, harrowing history of how drug cartels came to feed the beast of demand from Mexico’s neighbor to the north with a depraved disregard for life and law, Azam Ahmed’s true crime tale is absolutely electrifying. —Editor Name, Amazon Editor

Review

“Ahmed writes about violence in Mexico with insight and sobriety, avoiding the usual markers of journalistic prose (descriptions of the research process, references to site visits). Instead, he maintains a cautious, at times exhilarating, distance from his material, letting the story unfold at a rapid pace, as if on its own, interweaving the contextual and the intimate in a series of vivid juxtapositions.”—Cristina Rivera Garza, The New York Times

“From one of the best reporters of his generation comes this masterful portrait of nightmarish violence, endless pain, and great courage. Azam Ahmed shows us what America’s insatiable lust for drugs has done to one Mexican family and town just across the border.”—George Packer, author of Our Man

“Azam Ahmed has written a page-turning mystery but also a stunning, color-saturated portrait of the collapse of formal justice in one Mexican town.”—Steve Coll, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Directorate S

“Fear Is Just a Word is a brilliant piece of nonfiction storytelling. Ultimately it offers up a restorative tale of human redemption through individual courage.”—Jon Lee Anderson, author of Che

“With graceful, unflinching prose, Azam Ahmed brings us straight to the heart of cartel violence. The complexity with which he renders his brave subject, Miriam Rodríguez, only deepens the infuriating tragedy into which her family and country have been drawn. I can’t stop thinking about this book.”—Sierra Crane Murdoch, author of Yellow Bird

“A riveting work of reportage, set against the ruins of a drug war gone hopelessly, violently awry . . . I couldn’t put it down.”—Daniel Alarcón, author of The King Is Always Above the People

“Staggeringly well-reported, propulsive, vibrantly populated, powerfully gripping, and moving . . . Miriam is the avenging ‘mother of all Mexicans’ who had a child ‘disappear’ into the inferno of Mexico’s militarized drug cartel.”—Francisco Goldman, author of Monkey Boy

“Ahmed captures the essence of humanity in this deeply moving story about a brave yet flawed woman desperately searching for her daughter’s assassins as the clock ticks.”—Alfredo Corchado, author of Midnight in Mexico

“In his indelible work about a personal tragedy set against the canvas of a societal one, Ahmed writes about Mexico with uncommon authority and a broken heart.”—Gary Shteyngart, author of Our Country Friends

“A harrowing exposé, years in the making, of the tyranny of the drug cartels in Mexico.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Painstakingly reported and propulsively written, this is nearly impossible to put down.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“This vivid, disturbing story will appeal to readers interested in drug cartels and true crime.”—Booklist