In the Mouth of the Wolf

Starred review from August 15, 2022
Corcoran, the former Associated Press bureau chief for Mexico and Central America, debuts with a searing look at the unsolved 2012 murder of Regina Martínez, an investigative reporter for the Mexican magazine Proceso. Martínez was discovered beaten to death in her bathroom in the capital city of the state of Veracruz. Martínez’s targets had included influential politicians, such as Fidel Herrera, the former Veracruz governor, whom she’d linked to the misuse of state funds and organized crime. She persisted in her digging, despite Veracruz’s history as an extremely dangerous place for journalists. The number of powerful enemies she made led her colleagues to suspect that one of them, possibly Herrera, was responsible for the killing. Corcoran’s own reporting discredits the official story that the murder was a crime of passion and that a petty criminal, El Silva, arrested a few months after the killing, was responsible; her analysis makes it clear that El Silva, who confessed under torture, was just a patsy. Corcoran’s vivid account is based on hundreds of interviews she conducted in Mexico over seven years. Despite the lack of a satisfying resolution, this succeeds both as an homage to the heroic Martínez and as a gripping real-life whodunit. Agent: Gail Ross, Ross Yoon Agency.