CARI MORA by Thomas Harris

Once upon a time, Pablo Escobar owned a house in Miami, a dilapidated building that today serves primarily as a storehouse for movie props and for occasional filming of movie scenes.

For years, some people – very, very dangerous, greedy and ambitious people – have been trying to trace the real small fortune that Pablo Escobar had hidden somewhere, without knowing that he would not wait to benefit from it. Now they also know where those twenty-five million dollars of gold bullion are; the treasure of the drug cartel was hidden somewhere in that quiet house in Miami.

However, the obstacles to this treasure are not just the fact that they do not know exactly where the loot is located in the house, how to reach it without alarming the local police, and all this before being caught by another mafia group. An obstacle to looting is the fact that the housekeeper is in the house.

But these very, very dangerous men did much worse than robbery… One, Hans-Peter Schneider almost lives off the fulfillment of the most morbid, darkest, most vicious fantasies of powerful and wealthy men. A housekeeper, a beautiful and young Cara, once he deals with her privately, will only turn her into extra income. He already knows people who, when Hans-Peter once gets hold of her and “redefined” in his taste, would gladly pay several hundred thousand dollars.

Cari Mora has fled her native Columbia and is on a temporary work visa in America. She has been doing a number of jobs for years to survive, and all she imagines is the peace and security of her own, small, tidy and clean home. She is young and beautiful, true… But Cari Mora is far from the vulnerable and helpless woman she seems.

Ultimately, what she escaped from Colombia prepared her to become the only person who could save her own life and bring problems to those beasts lurking on her. And these people – these very dangerous, very greedy people – do not know …

Describing the impressions of this book does not really take many words – it is fast-paced, tense, brutal, fierce, and spends neither time nor words on deep introspections and analyzes of character relationships. There is no need. In fact, there is no time for that. Thomas Harris stripped his story down to the most basic human motivations and didn’t bother to bother the reader with all the side dishes and decorations on the plate, so to speak. No, he threw hot, bloody steak in front of us and left us to deal with.

For those who like this kind of meal, this book will be a real pleasure – which does not mean that delicious snacks will not stop in our throats. To me they did repeatedly. I am not ashamed to admit that I shed a tear in at least two scenes, and this book is far, very far from sentimental.

I can’t say this is Harris’s best book for me either, but I can say that Cari Mora is a shining gem among the female characters I’ve read about this (and the past) year. I may eventually forget the details of the story and the names of the other characters, but I will remember Cari well. You don’t have to be a beast to be dangerous…