Murder city : Ciudad Juarez and the global economy's new killing fields

Ciudad Juárez lies just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas.

A once-thriving border town, it now resembles a failed state.

Infamously known as the place where women disappear, its murder rate exceeds that of Baghdad or Mogadishu.

In Murder City , Charles Bowden has written an extraordinary account of what happens when a city disintegrates.

Interweaving stories of its inhabitants- a raped beauty queen, a repentant hit man, a journalist fleeing for his life- with a broader meditation on the town's descent into anarchy, Bowden reveals how Juárez's culture of violence will not only worsen but inevitably spread north.