plainsclothes policeman has been shot. From this point, the novel charts the emotional changes of the characters as their MG rolls down the coastal highways of California toward Mexico, leaving all familiarity to recede, like a billboard, behind them. They finally arrive in Tijuana on a hot, tourist-engorged afternoon. This is a Mexico far removed from the picturesque exotica of the movies; instead it is a seamy, stifling place, infested by Southern Californians eager to suck from it whatever little character it still maintains. It is these same Americans who, in their cars, apathetically pass by the violence and death that tragically concludes the trio's ill-fated flight. The theme of Mr. Salas's new novel, then, is escape, along with its vagrant confusions, dangers, exhilarations, and final irrationality.

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