The Yogi of Cockroach Court

The atmosphere of this novel reminded me of the film, "Touch of Evil" by Orson Welles...similarly to that film, there is something almost olfactory in the quality of Frank's writing here which transcends its medium, making the multitudinous savours of sin in old Mexicali Chinatown come alive in an additional dimension...when you know that the dams on the Colorado river changed this region forever (as Frank describes in detail in his classic, THE COLORADO),there is an additional thrilling sense of peering into a vanished place that almost no living being remembers, and that virtually no one else has written about...as well as being classic Southwestern literature, this is also 1940's era literary noir of the highest degree of quality, with a delicious mystical backstory thrown in. This is wonderful old fashioned melodrama, at a high level of artistic skill.