Narco and Knuckleheads: Satire On La Frontera

Is Getting Kidnaped in Mexico Comedy?

Review: José Skinner. The Search Committee. Houston: Arte Publico Press, 2025.

Michael Sedano

José Skinner had me fooled. The opening pages of his first novel, The Search Committee, evoke pleasant memories of Richard Russo’s Straightman, and James Hynes’ Publish and Perish: Three Tales of Tenure and Terror. I thought The Search Committee would be like these, a delightful satire on academia and small minds. I was partially right.

The Search Committee is a satire on academia and small minds, but the darned plot doesn’t entirely delight. I had to slog through my impatience at the novel's small minds and the awful stupidities Skinner concocts to drive his plot from funny-peculiar to totally bizarre outlandishness.

In the end, it’s all in fun and a romp through serious issues treated without an ounce of seriousness.

And what fun. An ABD  out of University of New Mexico lands an interview at a backwater Texas school, Bravo U (like the Rio Bravo), once a JC now a fully-fledged University. Quigley, the junior member of the search committee, is charged with meeting Minerva, or Minnie, Mondragón, at the airport, ferry her to lunch, then scoot off to school for her interview.

Instead of a few tacos at a local joint, they drive the 8 miles to the bridge, cross into México, and Minnie gets kidnapped, setting off a comedy of errors that start with Quigley abandoning the candidate and fashioning a lie that mushrooms into fragile lies that could explode at any moment, but The Search Committee’s a comedy, not an exercise in keen logic and credulity.

Minnie escapes and gets recaptured and back in la sequestrada with other women. But kidnapping a Unitedstatesian breaks certain rules, and a squad of armed men busts up the sequestrada and Minnie is free of the original kidnappers but is now held by the son of a fearsome narco boss. Minerva and the boss’ son fall into bed. But the son gets word Minnie is a CIA or DEA spy.

She’s not, but there are spies at work and, ironically, that’s what gets the hostage sprung. Back in the USA, Minnie’s having none of the crap that seems to await her. The novel ends with Minnie turning the tables on Quigley, her dissertation adviser, Bravo, and Homeland Security. She'll take the money and run.

Bizarre outlandishness is fun. The slow parts aside, a reader will forgive the blatant flaws in The Search Committee plot, relax and give into a willing suspension of absolute incredulity and let Skinner take the reins, leading readers into a wild romp along la frontera.