CROSSING HIS LAST BORDER: REMEMBERING BILLY KRING

Last week we lost a writer more should have known. Billy Kring crafted over a dozen self-published novels. Mark Pryor and Craig Johnson became admirers. Often culled from his experiences, serving up books like a fine mescal that goes down smooth and hits you in the gut when you least expect it.

His best known and respected work was his series featuring herione Hunter Kincaid. The character came out of the female colleagues he worked with as an agent for The Border Patrol. He designed her as both capable and human. If you're one of the bad guys, you don't want to be in her sights. he's a crack shot with a talent for approaching her assignments from a different angle. However it's her humanity to these on both sides of the border. that defines and drivers her.

Billy's experience came through in the series. He never shied away from the darker aspects of what he had seen. I invited him to talk about villains for a seminar I hosted. He talked about some crime scenes he witnessed in Mexico, The Students stumbled out for lunch like they had just been in a car crash. The title character in the first book, Quick, is one of the most heinous and believable antagonists I've read.

He took you into the world of The Border Patrol and you could see the love and sense of duty he felt for his vocation. He shows the job as being maintaining a series of relationships to have constant contacts. He also shows how you have to make a quick judgement if they encounter someone simply looking for a new life who you want to treat with dignity or a true criminal who needs to be treated with caution. Keeping in contact with his colleagues after he retired, you see the changes in law enforcement on the border change. Billy portrays is as where time and place blur. The books show respect to The Border Patrol without agenda and propaganda.

Outlaw Road, his second book in the series, stands as possibly his finest. Hunter goes into Mexico to check in on a young girl that had to be sent back from the states and finds her missing with several criminals wanting her to keep quiet about what she knows. With the help of a charismatic thief, she travels the back country of Mexico where smugglers and criminals operate know at "The Outlaw Road" to finished and execute her. Like a Peckinpah film it balances violence and humanity. You can hear a lonely mariachi guitar while reading it.

Billy wrote outside the series. He wrote a fun series featuring failed actor and L.A. private eye Ronnie Baca. He collaborated with George Wier with a Steampunk series that featured a space traveling Billy The Kid and Manning Wolfe with the gritty thriller Iron 13. When talking with him, he was planning a fantasy story, mainly for his grandchildren, then a new series with a Jack Reacher type who operates on the border. Those who read Billy Kring's book, admired the writing. Those who knew him, admired the man even more.