"Set along the Arizona-Mexico frontera, Mitchell's impressive, well-crafted debut captures the gritty reality of border life."

   "A polished, fast-paced first from a lawyer who clearly knows his way around immunity grants, warrants, and grand juries."

   "Solid prose, crafty plotting, and realistic characters recommend this to all collections."

   "First-time author James C. Mitchell starts out with a bang in this tale set in Tucson and the crossing for undocumented aliens–the 'Lovers Crossing'–near Nogales."

   "A well-plotted suspenseful read with appealing characters and a strong sense of place."

   "If all first books were this professional -- well plotted, with well defined characters and beautifully written -- a book reviewer's life would be one good read after another. Mitchell provides all of this and more."

   "Lovers Crossing gets the border area right. It's a place where cultures and languages clash and merge, where optimism mixes with desperation, where dreams and drugs collide. It's also a great place for a crime series, and Brinker might just be the man to take us there."

   "Mitchell's first novel features a detective as tenacious as he is sure-footed in the face of complicated motives and dangerous enemies."

   "The corruption and poverty in Mexico is described in convincing detail, as are the problems of the Border Patrol.... An impressive first novel.... Readers will probably wish to see more of Brinker, a new kind of border detective."

   "The whole time you are reading it, you are thinking and hoping it will be a series.... Everything, the characters, the dialogue and towns all feel and sound real."

   "What a clean, organized, poignant first novel! Mitchell memorably sets the scene in the desert and along the border without giving us a travelogue, and he lets us know Brink from the inside as life happens to him... this polished first effort is, I'm glad to report, the first in a series."

   "With the confidence of an old pro, Mitchell does not resolve all the dilemmas facing his characters. This leaves him an opening for sequels, and he is hard at work on them."