Head Games
From AwardAnnals
| Book: | Head Games: A Novel |
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| Author: | Craig McDonald |
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| Publisher: | Bleak House Books |
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Head Games, is a wistful ballad of lost America rooted in borderland myth and history.
In March 1916, Mexican General Pancho Villa raided and destroyed the town of Columbus, New Mexico, killing several civilians—the first and only successful stab at mainland America by foreign forces until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. President Woodrow Wilson dispatched Black Jack Pershing and an army of 10,000 into Mexico to find and bring back Gen. Villa—dead or alive.
The chase descended into a national debacle. Villa escaped, living in comfort and peace until his assassination in 1923. A short time later, someone dug up Pancho’s body and stole his head. Villa’s “officially” missing head is now linked in Tex-Mex folklore and myth with a vast and still-missing treasure of gold and silver.
An American soldier-of-fortune was arrested for stealing Pancho Villa’s skull. Many believe he was hired by the grandfather of U.S. President George W. Bush. Prescott Bush was a member of the secretive Yale Skull and Bones Society. Other members include President William Howard Taft, Henry Luce, Senator John F. Kerry, George Herbert Walker Bush and George W. Bush. In 1918, Prescott Bush, purportedly, personally participated in stealing the skull of Geronimo to be placed in the Skull and Bones’ infamous trophy cabinet.
Head Games narrator is Hector Lassiter, a larger-than-life crime writer who knew Hammett and Chandler … a boozing, brawling, much-married charmer who fished with Hemingway and bedded Hollywood starlets. Now widowed and feeling his age, Lassiter recovers Villa’s head. Within hours of taking possession of the skull, Lassiter and a young poet sent to profile him for True Magazine are targets of competing fraternities, Mexican bandits and U.S. intelligence services. The breakneck chase extends across 1957-1970 America—from the cantinas of old Mexico to the Venice, California set of Orson Welles’ noir classic Touch of Evil, to the sanctum sanctorum of Yale’s infamous Skull and Bones Society. The cast of characters includes Orson Welles, Marlene Dietrich, Jack Webb and a young and gone-missing National Guardsman named “George W.”
The legends linking the missing heads of Geronimo and Pancho Villa became a touchy issue during George H.W. Bush’s presidential race against Michael Dukakis. Currently, there is a growing movement in Mexico to push for George W. Bush to press Yale and his old fraternity to return Pancho Villa’s skull to the Mexican government.
