The Queen of the South

The book that inspired the new Space Channel series, starring Alice Braga as one of Spain's biggest drug traffickers. Teresa Mendonza was born in Culiacán, Mexico. Poor and with little education, she was raped and nearly killed after her boyfriend, an airline pilot working for the local cartel, was murdered by the drug lord. The young woman is then forced to flee to Spain, where her criminal instincts surface. There, she has no choice but to accept a merciless reality, in which there is no good or evil, but rather a reflection of a cruel universe, where killing, dying, deceiving, and corrupting are part of everyday life. Now, "La Mexicana," as she is known in the criminal underworld and by the press, is Spain's most powerful drug trafficker, owner of a disguised drug trafficking empire on the Costa del Sol. A story of corruption, love, and intrigue that reveals the best and worst of humankind. Pérez-Reverte creates a perfect portrait of Spain's drug-trafficking underworld, blending fact and fiction, sex, drugs, and violence, in a sweeping narrative. Teresa Mendonza's epic saga spans decades and continents in a story filled with sensuality, cruelty, love, betrayal, life, and death.