Mystery author puts War on Drugs front and center

Arizona mystery writer Clark Lohr says he grew up on a remote farm and ranch in Montana where most of his friends were old men who told good stories. Lohr, who recently released his second novel, is very focused on America’s War on Drugs, as this interview shows.

“Richard Nixon declared a U.S. war on drugs in June, 1971,” said Lohr. “The Arizona-Mexico borderlands, the place I’m writing from, is still a literal drug war battleground—an actual low intensity shooting war—forty-three years later. My hero and heroine debate—and bait—each other—from their respective sides of this war. Manny Aguilar, my detective hero, wants to keep fighting, mostly because drugs are illegal. His mate, Reina, sees the drug wars as a bigger mess than Prohibition.”

As Lohr points out, the War on Drugs is a hot-button topic in Arizona. The opinions on that topic can incite heated discussions about drugs and social actions. It was one of those discussions that led Lohr to the idea for the book. “In my view,” Lohr said, “anybody who’s literate enough to write a mystery should already know America’s drug wars are a failure. I had the good fortune to meet a mystery writer who thought it was fun to watch police bust people for marijuana possession. She gave me my idea for the social relevance portion of the novel.”

“The Devil on Eighty-five” is a crime novel featuring the stark reality of the Arizona-Mexico border. Lohr describes the location as “three borders; four jurisdictions; three languages; terrain where ground temperatures can hit 130 degrees; bandits, cops, and cartels, all armed and all stalking the desert at night; a fortune to be made in drugs and human smuggling.” In the book, he adds a killer who cuts off a dead woman’s finger to get a ring.

Lohr said that he would like readers to gain a better understanding of the complex reality in the Arizona borderlands. “Few Americans—and Arizonans—really understand the complex, heart breaking, rights-in-conflict situation we live with every day.”

He added, “I’d especially like U.S. citizens to begin to understand that our war on drugs has created a criminal insurgency in Mexico; that huge international banks launder billions in drug money with few to no consequences; that both cops and drug users die because drugs are illegal—and that their deaths are meaningless. They are replaced in a finger snap as the drug wars grind on. The U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration of any nation in the world and responsible politicians and police of many nations, including our own, have called for an end to a war that has cost U.S. taxpayers trillions of dollars since it began way back in 1971. The real reason the drug wars go on is that everybody involved on either side is getting a paycheck out of this war—cops, robbers, bankers, lawyers, judges,  politicians, the private prisons, and so on.”

Lohr, who has been thrown off of horses and thrown out of bars, says most of his life has been urban and mundane. That, however, hasn’t stopped him from doing research some writers might consider “over the top.” Lohr said, “I have camped out in the Cabeza Prieta Wildlife Refuge a number of times. Ajo, Arizona, is bordered on the West by this refuge and a permit is needed for access.”

He added, “Since it bordered by Mexico on the south, the Goldwater Bombing Range on the east—which is used by the Air Force, and the Barry M. Goldwater Range, West, on the west side—a range used by the US Marine Corps, and, since bombing range means that the military conducts live fire exercises on both ranges, pumping tons of bombs and millions of rounds of automatic cannon rounds into the desert; and, since all these political/administrative boundaries are located in a beautiful, but forbidding, desert, where elevation is a thousand feet above sea level; and, since ground temperatures can hit 130 degrees in the spring, summer, and fall—with no water, snakes, scorpions, and the like; and, since the area contains abandoned mine shafts and unexploded ordinance going back to the 1940s; and, since the area is routinely traversed by drug and human smugglers, some of them armed with machine guns, anyone who goes out must display their permit and sign a document stating that they have been advised all these dangers exist, and that they can kiss their ass goodbye for any number of the above stated reasons.”

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Learn more about Clark Lohr on his blog at clarklohr.com.