There are many ways to die in the Sierra Madre, a notorious nine-hundred-mile mountain range in northern Mexico where AK-47s are fetish objects, the law is almost non-existent & power lies in the hands of brutal drug mafias. Thousands of tons of opium & marijuana are produced there every year. Richard Grant thought it would be a good idea to travel the length of the Sierra Madre & write a book about it. He was warned before he left that he would be killed. But driven by what he calls `an unfortunate fascination` for this mysterious region, Grant sets off anyway. In a remarkable piece of investigative writing, he evokes a sinister, surreal landscape of lonely mesas, canyons sometimes deeper than the Grand Canyon, hostile villages & an outlaw culture where homicide is the most common cause of death & grandmothers sell cocaine. Finally his luck runs out & he finds himself fleeing for his life, pursued by men who would murder a stranger in their territory `to please the trigger finger`.