The Neighborhood, by Mario Vargas Llosa

9780374155124
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018
originally published as Cinco Esquinas, 2016
translated by Edith Grossman
244 pp

hardcover

I'm posting about this book here because the dustjacket blurb says that it's a "crime thriller."  While there is a crime (a murder, as a matter of fact), the book is certainly much more than just mere crime-fiction fodder.   I will say right up front that in terms of the writing,  The Neighborhood is nowhere close to the excellence of his other books (Feast of the Goat and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter spring to mind immediately); having said that though, I think it is a book worth reading,  most especially because it comes down to the question of journalistic integrity in a country rampant with corruption.

We're in Lima during the 1990s when Peru was under the leadership of Alberto Fujimori. The topics that "obsessed every household in those days" were

"the attacks and kidnappings of the Shining Path and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, the MRTA, the blackouts almost every night because electrical towers had been blown up, leaving entire districts of the city in darkness, and the explosions the terrorists used to awaken Limeños at midnight and at dawn."

 Citizens are under curfew; many business people have fled the country taking their money with them.  Not so Enrique Cardenas -- "Quique to his wife and friends" -- an engineer who has made his fortune in mining.   He is visited one day by the editor of a "yellow" magazine by the name of  Rolando Garro, who tries to blackmail Quique with photos that reveal Quique's participation in a drug-fueled orgy some time back.  Garro had been in journalism for some time before he found his true calling, "to use as he pleased and  help to ruin without pity," and he was popular among a

"public delighted to follow his revelations, accusing singers and musicians of being faggots, his morbid explorations of the private lives of public persons, his 'first fruits' exposing the base and shameful acts that he always exaggerated and at times invented."

Enrique doesn't pay and the photos are splashed all over the front page of Garro's magazine Exposed. The scandal that follows is bad enough for Enrique, but when Garro is found dead close to the neighborhood known as the Five Corners "the navel of Barrios Altos" and "one of the most violent neighborhoods in Lima,"  Enrique becomes a suspect, things quickly get worse.  But the murder also has other  outcomes that will land squarely on the shoulders of Garro's star reporter, Julieta Leguizamón, aka Shorty.

It doesn't take too long before the reader notices that this book is split into two very different worlds. The author begins in that of the Cardenas family and their friends, who live in the lap of luxury,  own properties and go for weekends outside of the country, and who are free to indulge in some rather hedonistic pleasures (including the sex scene that opens the novel which occurred because of the curfew).  The two women in these families seem bored and in need of distraction.   Their money cushions them from the realities of the hardscrabble life of the residents on the streets of Barrios Altos,  the world inhabited by people like Shorty and by Juan Peineta, a former popular, well-known reciter of verses (including those of Neruda) who used to have his own radio show and now waits in line for his single meal of the day at a local convent.   But corruption knows no boundaries in this book -- it permeates through this city at all levels.

Aside from the unnecessarily long, drawn-out sex scenes (which I didn't like at all, but I got the point) and the unnecessary subplot attached to them, The Neighborhood is a good, not great book, which when all is said and done, for me comes down to a question of journalistic integrity and truth amid a climate of corruption.  And although it's set in the 1990s, it is highly relevant at the moment, an even better reason for reading it.

Kill the Next One, by Federico Axat

9780316354219
Mulholland/Little, Brown and Company 2017
originally published as La última salida, 2016
translated by David Frye
407 pp

hardcover

"Open the door. It's your only way out."

As soon as I turned the last page of this  novel I had to question (once again) the publisher's decision to a) change the title and b) come up with a dustjacket blurb that hardly matches what goes in in this book.  I'm afraid I don't understand either, since when all is said and done, the original Spanish title is much more reflective of the nature of what happens here and the blurb is sort of misleading re the story as a whole.  I'm not surprised that so many readers were frustrated with this book, since they were expecting one thing and got something completely different.  I bought this one based on the fact that it's a crime novel from Argentina more than for any other reason -- I love translated crime, and I especially like to try out the work from authors who are new to me.

Let's get back to that blurb, referring to the main character of the story, Ted McKay, who as the novel opens, is on the edge of shooting himself in the head to end it all.  He's at home,  locked into his own study; his wife Holly is away on vacation with their two daughters, and he's even been thoughtful enough to leave a note telling Holly where he's left the key to the study and not to let the kids in after she opens the door.  As he works up the courage to shoot himself, a "barrage of shouts and banging" at the door draw his attention, and he knows that "he'd have no choice but to see what it was all about."   He opens it to find a man he doesn't know standing there, but strangely, the man, who gives his name as Justin Lynch, somehow knows Ted's name. Ted slams the door closed once again, but Lynch is persistent and through the door  reveals to Ted that he knows what he's about to do with the gun, and if Ted would open the door, he promises not to try to stop him. After a bit of time, Lynch comes right to the point and

"...makes him a proposition: why not kill two deserving men before dying? The first target is a criminal, and the second is a man with terminal cancer, who, like Ted, wants to die."

The tradeoff for Ted is that

 "after executing these kills, Ted will become someone else's next target, like a kind of suicidal daisy chain." 

It's an idea that Ted doesn't necessarily dismiss and he even goes as far to work out a plan but, of course, things don't exactly work out in the way he (or we) expected, diverging in a very, very big way.  That bit of plot  will come back much later, but in a hugely different fashion that allowed for an "aha" moment by the time I got there.  I can't really go into too much detail here because saying pretty much anything would constitute a major spoiler and ruin the reading experience, but the point is that while we actively start with the blurb's premise in mind, it turns out that that's not really the story at all.

from We Know Your Dreams

Kill the Next One messed with my head for quite a while, because it is one of those stories where things seem to make sense and yet they don't if you are reading carefully; things tend to move and change quickly here making it even more of a head scratcher.  Even as things start to become a little clearer, it's like being in a gradually-lifting fog where you can sort of make out shapes but you know that your vision is still a bit distorted; it isn't until the very end that everything comes into focus.  The enigmatic in any novel appeals to me; this book is like one giant puzzle where pieces are gradually filled in but there is still a lot of space on the table before the full picture emerges.

It's neither a great nor perfect book by any means with character issues that crop up,  lengthy, sometimes over-the-top scenes that could have been pared down quite a bit to give the story more punch, and it seems to me that there were still some things that could have been a bit more fleshed out (especially considering the real story underpinning everything here)  but even with its issues,  it has a sort of eerieness about it that made it a worthwhile, page-flipping, and entertaining read that I had trouble putting down.

 My advice to potential readers: don't look at reviews that give away the show because as you move away from the expected into deeper, darker territory, you really don't want to know beforehand what's coming at you -- it will totally ruin things. While I've seen it referred to as a thriller, it really moves into that territory only toward the end; before that though, it's much more in the psychological category, but even that may be saying too much about it.

Death Going Down, by María Angélica Bosco

9781782272236
Pushkin Vertigo, 2016
originally published as La muerte bajo en ascensor, 1955
translated by Lucy Greaves
151 pp

paperback

"What do you do when you're standing in front of a painting? You adopt different positions until you get the best perspective."

Originally published in 1955, Death Going Down begins with Pancho Soler's return to his apartment building on Calle Santa Fe in Buenos Aires in the wee hours of the morning -- at two o'clock to be precise.  He's a bit smashed, nauseous, and unsteady on his feet, but all of that changes when he sees that there's a dead woman  in the elevator.  Now he's alert and really shook up.  Luckily he doesn't have to face it alone -- just moments after his gruesome discovery, he is joined by another tenant arriving home, a Doctor Adolfo Luchter.  Luchter realizes that the police will have to be called in, and that the victim seems to have been poisoned.  Thus begins the investigation, but it won't be easy for the detectives to unravel this one -- with six floors of occupants, there are certainly plenty of suspects from which to choose.  The investigators certainly have their work cut out for them, since the apartment building houses a number of  people who harbor a variety of secrets that they are reluctant to divulge.  Yet, as Inspector Ericourt notes, "There is always a truth, even if it's hidden." His task is to find it.

While Death Going Down works along the lines of a police procedural/detective novel, it is neither a cut-and-dried nor a routine detective story. After finishing it, I have to say I was surprised not only at the identity of the murderer but also at the assumptions I made as a reader while following the case.  When I turned the last page, it dawned on me just how very clever the author had been here precisely in how she used reader expectations while developing this story.  The book is well worth reading for several reasons (including the fact that the apartment building is home to a number of European refugees from World War II - very nice move), but for me it was all about the fact that I was completely caught off guard while expecting one thing and ending up with  something completely different. Sorry to sound so cryptic, but I really don't want to divulge anything.

The story moves a bit slowly and may not be for readers who like fast-paced crime; it's really not cozy material, and it's not at all your average police procedural. However, it's quite good, nicely done, and as I said, the solution threw me for a loop.  Suffice it to say that any author who can do this in a whodunit earns my great respect, since I've been reading mystery/crime novels since I was about five.

  From the back-cover blurb I learned  that María Angélica Bosco was known in her day as "the Argentinian Agatha Christie," but I have to say that her writing style (at least as evidenced here)  is most definitely her own.  Readers of translated crime fiction really do not want to pass this one by.

Betty Boo, by Claudia Piňeiro

9781908524553
Bitter Lemon Press, 2016
originally published as Betibú, 2011
translated by Miranda France
313 pp

paperback

I'll start here by saying that I loved this book.  It's only February, and it's already my favorite crime novel of the year. Let's just say that in terms of current crime fiction, something absolutely spectacular is going to have to come along to move it down the list from number one.

Claudia Piňeiro is also at the top of my list of contemporary crime writers, and with good reason. In all of her books, she has this uncanny knack of being able to put her characters into some pretty extreme situations and then we watch as they exercise their consciences (or not) and act accordingly.  The results are always beyond amazing, supporting my idea that the best crime fiction doesn't necessarily have to be plot driven -- what people do and why, what they discover about themselves, and in some cases about the society in which they live, is why I read crime.  People who have not read Claudia Piňeiro's work are missing out on some of the best crime writing of our time.

As was the case in her Thursday Night Widows, the author takes us back into that bastion of elite privilege, the gated community in Buenos Aires.  This time we are at the Maravillosa Country Club, where after going through the regular rigorous security measures to get in to clean the home of Pedro Chazarreta, Gladys Varela gets to the house, starts her routine, and sees Chazaretta sleeping in a green velvet, highback chair.  Deciding to clean up a bit of whisky that's spilled on the floor from an overturned glass, she discovers that Chazaretta is not sleeping at all, but dead, throat slit and holding a bloody knife in his right hand. Despite its tightness of security,  Maravillosa had been the site of another, earlier murder, that of Chazaretta's wife Gloria. He had been the prime suspect in her death, but "on the grounds of lack of evidence," the case was dismissed.  Her murder had been committed in exactly the same way, and privately, people are saying that the way in which Chazaretta was killed is what he deserved, since most people still believe that he was Gloria's killer.

Chazaretta's death and the coverage of events marks the beginning of a partnership between the three main characters in this novel. First there is Jaime Brena, an over-sixty former crime writer for the newspaper El Tribuno,who has been demoted and  is now dealing with society news such as writing pieces about surveys about sleeping face up or face down, the occasional preschool opening, and other such mundane or ridiculous assignments. The crime beat was given to  the "Crime Boy," who is the new kid on the newspaper staff, and who, as Brena sees it, is "Very soft. Generation Google: no legwork, just keyboard and screen, everything off the Internet."  He has zero clue how to do his crime reporting job, and Brena actually feels sorry for him, and decides it can't hurt to take the kid under his wing.  The third leg of this triangle is Nurit Iscar, the titular Betty Boo, who until she decided to change direction and write a romance novel, was known as "the Dark Lady of Argentine literature," for her mystery/crime books.  However, a bad review of her romance novel took her out of the world of fiction writing altogether (except for jobs as a ghostwriter)  but she has been tasked by the editor of El Tribuno (who used to be a lover of hers) to provide write-ups about the Chazaretta murder from a home the paper is using in Maravillosa.  When the three put their heads together, this trio of loners discover that something horrific is going on, and that the deaths at Maravillosa are just the tip of the iceberg.

However great the crime plot sounds, Betty Boo moves well out of the ordinary realm of the norm in terms of just another book with just another murder investigation.  When all is said and done, the biggest focus of this book is in examining  the state of modern journalism. Brena refers to Rodolfo Walsh more than once in this novel,  an Argentinian journalist who, in 1977 in the middle of the Dirty War, wrote an open letter to the military junta and was killed the day after.  Walsh wrote that

"Millions want to be informed. Terror is based on lack of communication. Break the isolation. Feel again the moral satisfaction of an act of freedom. Defeat the terror. Circulate this information."

Brena notes that today's journalists have "turned bourgeois," and that

"Today the high priests of journalism, or 'intellectuals" in inverted commas, are happy to sound off from the safety of their studies or their holiday homes. And they think they're important because they're 'opinion-formers.' ... Many of them will offer up as an irrefutable truth something that's nothing more than their own opinion. Or the opinion of the people they work for."

Piňeiro also reveals the implications of a "news agenda that leaves out certain stories," often allowing perpetrators of major crimes to walk free. It is these "unpunished crimes," Pineiro notes, that "always conceal something more terrible than the crime itself."  For my money, she's hit the nail on the head.
 Considering that this is a novel from Argentina, this topic carries a lot of historical meaning and a lot of historical weight, but I could feasibly make the same argument about journalism and the media in this country, or for that matter, any other country where powerful people have the means to control the truth. As Nurit Iscar also notes, novelists have a responsibility as well -- to present "another reality, an even truer one," in the guise of fiction, since they "don't have to answer to any one."

Of course, there's so much more in this novel, and  it is one you could read solely for the murder plot. However, the truth is that  Betty Boo has a richness and a depth that is rarely found in crime writing these days, and it is that kind of something so out of the ordinary that I look for when I pick up a crime novel.  This book  is another one that left me stunned because of how very perceptive it is -- and I can't speak highly enough about it.  

A Crack in the Wall, by Claudia Pineiro

9781980524089
Bitter Lemon Press, 2013
originally published as Las grietas de Jara, 2009
translated by Miranda France
 218 pp

paperback

"The lack of underpinning caused structural collapse, which then set off a series of movements causing the ground to shift..."

I absolutely love Claudia Piñeiro's writing and this time she's outdone herself. A Crack in the Wall is absolutely superb.  The only bad thing about Piñeiro's books is that there aren't more coming out in rapid succession.   Let me just say up front that while this isn't simply a novel of crime fiction per se, the crime that does occur has a great deal to do with the rest of the story.  Metaphorically, this is a story about a man whose personal and moral ground undergoes a seismic shift, leading him to decide to  "rediscover something that, until recently, he didn’t even realize he had lost."

Set in Buenos Aires in 2007,  this very character-driven novel focuses on architect Pablo Simó, who works in a dead-end job.  He's been there for more than twenty years, and has never made it to a higher level in his career the entire time. At the office, when he's not working, he spends time drawing the same eleven-story tower over and over again -- a building he would make real if he could, and not "on the rubble of something else,"  the modern reality in Buenos Aires, where land is simply not available, and old buildings have to come down for the new ones to go up.  It is also an old city that is being transformed as profit margin starts edging out the old for the new.   As an example, Pablo loves to go to a particular café where

"the same waiters have been toiling for years, shouting their orders over to the bar with enviable brio, and where there are white cloths over the wooden tables and old-fashioned glass sugar-shakers with metal spoons,"

and hates the chain that's been "scattering identikit cafés throughout the city."

Pablo's firm specializes in cheap housing;  the owner is Borla, and there is also Marta, who has a thing going with her married boss. Pablo is married to Laura, has a teenaged daughter Francisca, and his life is very routine.  He also spends a lot of time conversing with an old friend Tano, whom he hasn't seen for a while, in his head -- Tano is also an architect, and their "conversations" are like a dialogue where Pablo engages with his conscience.  Into the office one day,  one that Pablo "had always feared might one day come to pass," comes a young, 20-something woman named Leonor asking for Nelson Jara.  Her visit shakes them all up, because they know where Nelson Jara is, and they don't want to think about it. In fact, they've spent the last three years trying not to think about Nelson Jara, a man who'd come into the office to complain about a crack in the wall of his apartment.  He claims that construction of a building that Borla's company is working on is causing the crack, and he shows Pablo some photos that prove how the crack has progressed.   Pablo does his best to convince Jara otherwise, but he's not listening.  Eventually Jara gets down to the nitty gritty:

"...there may be a structural problem here that ends up affecting other apartments too, and my silence has got to be worth something, don't you think?"

Jara starts to get under Pablo's skin, but not just because of the money or the extortion attempt --  Pablo recognizes he too has a crack, one that, like the one on Jara's wall, has been widening for some time.  This notion hits him most especially before a trip around the city with Leonor, who has asked him to pick "the city's five most beautiful buildings, according to the architect Pablo Simó" for a photography course assignment. An imagined conversation with Tano reminds him that he used to be a person with ideals, making him wonder where that other person is now.  His growing awareness of the crack in the wall dividing who he is and who he knows he can be spreads out to other areas of his life as well, encompassing the realization that his life over the last twenty years has been one consisting largely of compromise -- moral and otherwise.

A Crack in the Wall is an excellent novel, one that will satisfy readers of  more literary-styled crime fiction, but it rises well above the usual fare, as do all of her books. There's so much going on in this book that's beyond great in terms of the writing, and kudos to the translator as well.   In all of her novels, Claudia Piñeiro has this way of getting into private lives and exposing the cracks that exist there, personally and within various types of relationships, bringing her characters to a point where they're forced to examine themselves. If that sort of thing appeals, you can't ask for a better book.  Very highly recommended.

Holy City, by Guillermo Orsi

9780857050632
MacLehose Press, 2012 (UK)
originally published as Ciudad Santa, 2009
translated by Nick Caistor
302 pp
(trade paper ed.)

"There aren't any people in this city, Verónica. Only monsters."

Setting down my thoughts about this novel is not an easy task; it has a level of complexity that is not easy to translate into a standard summary or review.  Holy City is no ordinary novel of crime fiction -- it is a look not only into the darkness of  the Buenos Aires underworld but also its connections to corruption among  politicians, the legal and justice systems, and the police of the city, all  institutions that are supposed to function as protectors of the city's populace but which  have instead carved out their own little niches of power, money and influence. It also provides a glimpse into Argentinian attitudes toward their neighbors, into  remnants of Argentina's junta-ruled past and the problems with America's ongoing battle in the war on drugs.  This book just screams noir, with its dark, atmospheric undertones, and while it may be a bit confusing with its multiple subplots and characters, overall it is a great read, a bit challenging but one that is unforgettable. 

In a brief look at this complex book, the novel opens with the execution of the former right-hand man of Alberto Cozumel Banegas, dubbed "Councillor Pox." Banegas

 "rules with an iron fist his twenty blocks in the south of Matanza, an open sewer inhabited by the rejects of the system, zombies who steal and kill for food, ragged foot-soldiers in an army whose only discipline in the certainty that if they disobey orders they will starve to death."

The man who's about to die is Zamorano, who allowed himself to be convinced by Ana Torrente, a former Miss Bolivia with "the face of a cherub floating on a cloud" to double cross his boss.   Ana, running scared, turns to lawyer Verónica Berutti for help and some protection; until Berutti can arrange it, she allows Ana to stay in her apartment. But Ana flees, taking along with her Verónica's old pistol.  In the meantime, the Queen of Storms, a cruise ship filled with very wealthy passengers, runs aground in the Río de la Plata estuary.  The passengers are taken off the ship and hoteliers are vying to put them up in their establishments.  On board is also a young man, Pacogoya, who has made himself useful by selling drugs to the foreigners (among other things).  Pacogoya meets his dealer who tells him he can only get him half, but gives him an address where he can get the rest.  When he arrives he finds a decapitated body, the first of many throughout this book.  Eventually Pacogoya is compelled into delivering up a list of names of the most wealthy passengers on the ship, who are eventually kidnapped and held for ransom.  One of those couples turns out be extremely important: a Colombian drugs-mafia boss and his girlfriend.  Veronica, friends with Pacogoya and still looking for Ana,  finds that her life is in danger and is assigned a bodyguard; she also seeks help from  Deputy Inspector Walter Carozza of the serious crime squad in the Federal Police.   As events progress, Carozza realizes that something huge is going on; that it's not enough to get the small fry behind the operation but to find out just who is running the show.   In a police effort  to retrieve the passengers he is teamed with Oso Berlusconi, a cop with a penchant for sadistic violence who got into the police partially to finance living the good life.   And as the action moves along, looming in the background is a growing number of dead bodies, all with no heads.

Holy City is really one of those books you must read yourself -- a mere description is  not enough, and to say more would really wreck it for anyone potentially interested.  It's probably one of this year's darker reads, but at the same time it's an eye opener.  The story is highly credible and clear cut, often moving in memories between past and present as a way of getting into the lives of the main characters. The best thing about this novel is that as you read it, you get a real sense that Orsi has the ability to get underneath the surface and into the reality of life on multiple levels -- that here's someone who really gets it and not only understands how things work but is also able to convey that reality  to his readers.  The atmosphere surrounding the stories within the novel is always dark and bleak; the neighborhoods of the city are realistically described so that you feel yourself there.  At the same time,  the book gets a bit confusing toward the end when all is revealed; although ultimately satisfying, you may have to go back and reread the last few pages before the story really gels.

Definitely a good book, but also not for everyone, Holy City will satisfy anyone's need for a good  jolt of  serious noir.  I'm attracted to the darkness of this book, but it's also a challenging read, not one to rush through.   Definitely not for cozy readers or for those who are into lighthearted and redeeming fare; all other serious crime junkies will probably like it. 

crime fiction from Argentina

Sweet Money, by Ernesto Mallo

9781904738732
Bitter Lemon Press, 2011
originally published as Delincuente argentino, 2007
translated by Katherine Silver
223 pp.

(read in July)

You seriously could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard (from the author, no less!) that Inspector Lascano would be returning after Needle in a Haystack. There are plenty of recaps in this book which describe the action in Mallo's first Inspector Lascano novel, so I won't take the time to explain; suffice it to say, it seemed wildly improbable that there could be a sequel.  But thank goodness there is (although now I'm hard pressed to figure out how Lascano will return in a third book!), and it's a good one.

The blurb on the front cover says the following:

"1980s Argentina...In a country still ruled by corruption and violence, where can a good man turn?"

That is precisely the question, one to which Venancio Ismael (Perro) Lascano will have to find an answer. Since the action of Needle in a Haystack, Buenos Aires has become a different city.  State-sanctioned terror is over, talk of democracy is in the air, and sadly, denial that there was ever a "Dirty War" is floating around the country's officialdom.  Several veteran military officers have been given their walking papers in favor of newer, younger ones. A segment of the police department known as "The Apostles" (who themselves deal in the profitable drug trade)  has finally come to power by killing the man to whom Lascano owes his life. And worse -- his best friend and Eva, the woman he loves, are no longer in town, and Lascano has no clue as to their whereabouts.  Having lost his protector, Lascano is set up as a target by the Apostles, and a hit is put out on him.  While he's busy trying to save his own skin, with the help of the few friends left from the heyday of his police career, he also comes to realize that he's got to get out of town.  His opportunity comes after a bank is robbed by recently-released criminal nicknamed Miranda the Mole, who is himself eager to get out of the criminal life, just settle down and make up lost time with his family. This robbery was to be Miranda's criminal swan song.  But there's a problem.    It seems that a large sum of money has gone missing that shouldn't have even been at the branch that was robbed, and Lascano is hired to get the money back discreetly.  With the sum he's offered, he could leave and focus on finding Eva and try to start his life over.  But of course, things are not going to be so easy.

 Once again, Mallo has managed to capture a portrait of a city, as well as a country, in transition, one in which old scores still remain to be settled.  And even though there's not much room for an honest cop like Lascano, there's another person to take note of -- the Public Prosecutor, Marcelo Pereyra, who is keen to take on

...open cases, a series of crimes committed by the military during the dictatorship that have never been brought to trial or punished, that have been bogged down in a series of laws and contradictory decrees, in many cases unconstitutional...

Marcelo is also working on cases of the children of those who disappeared -- and all roads seem to lead him to Lascano's old nemesis, Major Giribaldi.  One of the questions that arises is how Marcelo is going to provide justice within a system that is still corrupt, where he works "in opposition to the government's lack of political will to prosecute criminals in uniform."  He's a very interesting character, and at times reminiscent of the prosecutor in Roncagliolo's Red April, who also wanted to do honest work within the scope of a corrupt political environment.  The characters are all well drawn, even the bad guys, but there is just something about this prosecutor that really stands out.

At times Sweet Money is sad and even a little heartbreaking, especially when discussing the children of the disappeared, but it's also a story that has a bite, enough to satisfy anyone who enjoys the mix of crime and historical fiction.   The way Mallo puts his conversations in italics is clever, conveying the feel of real conversation without interruptions. It's punchy, to the point and the reader is drawn to it because of the way it is set apart from Mallo's regular prose. The reader is drawn right away into the story, and there are enough places within the novel that summarize the action of Needle in a Haystack so that if you haven't read it, you'd at least get the gist of it.  I personally recommend reading it before this one, especially because of the characters' backstories. Plus, it's a great crime fiction novels set during the Dirty War.

Once again, all I can say is "yay!" and I understand there's going to be one more book to feature Lascano.  Sweet Money is a very welcome addition to my crime fiction library, and it's also a good historical fiction piece as well. It's gritty, down to earth and the writing is excellent. Definitely recommended -- one you should not miss.

Red April, by Santiago Roncagliolo

9780375425448
Pantheon Books
2009
Originally published as Abril Rojo, 2006
translated by Edith Grossman

"This place is doomed to be bathed in blood and fire forever"

Red April is a mix of political thriller, whodunit and a commentary on the misuse of power in a nation teeming with corruption.  It is a novel steeped in violence and death, often gruesome in detail, and takes place largely  in the city of Ayacucho, Peru. The year is 2000,  when the official line is that "terrorism was eradicated and contines to be eradicated at the present time, " referring to the ongoing series of wars between the military and the Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path.  Like many other works of translated crime fiction, there's more than just a mystery at the heart of this book -- most notably, there's the question of an uncertain future for Peru and its people.

Félix Chacaltana Saldívar (Chalcatana) the main character of this novel, had requested and received a transfer to Ayacucho (which means "Place of the dead")  from Lima in his role as a prosecutor.  For most people, this would have been a step backward, or perhaps a demotion, but for Chacaltana, it's a return to his boyhood home. Leaving behind a bad marriage, he jumps into his work with gusto. Punctilious and pedantic by nature, he knows every law, is familiar with every procedure and spends his days writing reports. Normally, the prosecutor's office took care of cases of "drunken fights or domestic abuse, at the most some rape," but a  case comes up in which a man is found dead in a most horrendous manner and lands on Chacaltana's desk.  After some investigation of the case, the prosecutor makes what might be a connection to terrorist activity, but the military government wants him to keep quiet and tell no one, because despite Chacaltan's protests,  "nobody wants to hear about terrorists in Ayacucho":

Look Chacaltana, I'll be totally frank with you, and I hope this is the last time we talk about this subject. The police are controlled by the Ministry of the Interior, and the interior minister is a military man.  Doesn't that tell you something?....Our duty is to shut up and do what we're told. Is it so difficult to get that into your head? Listen, I have no interest in helping you because I don't feel like it. But even if I did want to help you, I couldn't. So don't get me involved in this because you'll fuck up my promotion. Please, I'm begging you! I have a family! I want to go back to Lima! ... Why don't you write a report and close the case once and for all? ...this is an emergency zone. A large part of the department is still classified as a red zone. Laws are legally suspended.

Not only are elections just around the corner, and there are promotions at stake, but Ayacucho is in the midst of Holy Week, which means tourists and massive celebrations.  But Chacaltana isn't to be mollified, and when a second murder is discovered, he is sent to the countryside to monitor the upcoming elections, obviously to get him out of the way.  And even though on his return he finds himself with no work to do "not even an indictment, not even a memorandum," he remains dedicated to solving the case.  The problem is that as the celebrations get into full swing, so does the killer, and eventually Chacaltana finds himself caught up in a situation where he doesn't know who to believe or who to trust.

 Red April is not a tame crime thriller that you can read, put away and forget.  The author paints his scenes with often graphic violence, and at times the reality of the situation is read as though the reader is caught up in a surreal vision.  For example, the description of Yawarmayo, the rural area to where Chacaltana is sent as an election supervisor, is as disturbing as the descriptions of the mutilated bodies.  When he arrives in the countryside, he is greeted by the sight of dead dogs that have been strung up on streetlights wearing signs that say "This is how traitors die."  Explosions in the dead of night are commonplace, along with "howls from the hills." And the reaction of the townspeople? When Chacaltana asks if this is normal, he's told "No. They're pretty calm today." In fact, the entire atmosphere of this book is rather terrifying, all the more so because of the reality beneath the fiction.

The author's depiction of the situation in Peru is bleak:

Ayacucho is a strange place. The Wari culture was here, and then the Chancas, who never let themselves be conquered by the Incas. And then the indigenous rebellions, because Ayacucho was the midway point between Cuzco, the Inca capital, and Lima, the capital of the Spaniards. And independence in Quinua. And Sendero. This place is doomed to be bathed in blood and fire forever....Why? I have no idea. It doesn't matter.

The author has done a most excellent job of transmitting the realities of this most frightening political situation to his readers, most of whom will never be caught up in this sort of horror.

I found it to be an engrossing read that I couldn't put down.  Even though it was difficult to read at times because of its gruesome depictions and its dark and often claustrophobic atmosphere, it's a story that needed telling.  Definitely recommended, but not for readers of light crime.

*Needle in a Haystack, by Ernesto Mallo

9781904738565

Bitter Lemon Press, 2010

Original Spanish title: La aguja en el pajar, 2006

translated by Jethro Soutar

190 pp.

Needle in a Haystack is set in the late 1970s during Argentina's "dirty war," when a military junta has seized power and the regime is constantly on the lookout for anyone opposed to its rule.  Anyone the government considers subversive is picked up and is either killed, imprisoned, or simply disappears.  As the book notes prior to the beginning of the novel, Ernesto Mallo was one of these "anti-Junta activists" who was "pursued by the dictatorship," so I realized right away this was going to be a readworthy novel: it is factually based from someone who actually lived through the terrors of the time.  And I was not disappointed -- considering this is the first in a planned series, it's a definite winner.

As the story opens, detective Superintendent Lascano is assigned to look into a case of two bodies found on the riverside.  When he arrives, he actually finds three bodies, two of which he immediately ascertains are the victims of the military death squads, leaving the mystery of what happened to the third.  Eventually the body is identified as one Elias Biterman, a Jewish moneylender who survived Auschwitz and eventually arrived in Argentina, toughened by his life experiences. But this book is not really a mystery; the reader knows who Biterman's killer is -- the author explains who and why as he moves backward and forward through time up through the 1970s present.  The death of Biterman and the who and the whys really serve as a vehicle to explore this time in Argentina's history.  This is not to say that the book is not an intense novel of crime fiction, because it is -- but it's also much much more.

What really strikes me about this book is the characters and the well-evoked sense of place and time. Mallo has created an incredible conglomeration of people in this book whose stories come together to form the whole of this novel:

Lascano, whose wife recently died in a car accident, and who believes in justice and yet knows when to look the other way;  Eva, a political dissident accustomed to danger who survives a raid only to be found and taken in by Lascano, who is taken aback by her resemblance to his dead wife; callous Giribaldi, a major in the army who believes in helping out his old friends  yet at the same time won't let anyone or anything such as the law get in his way, creating his own justifications for getting rid of those who do; Amancio, who grew up rich, spent his childhood on the family's 20,000-acre ranch or on vacation in Europe, now living on his family's prestigious name but without a penny in his pocket as a result of a dwindling fortune and living the life of a playboy; Lara, his wife, who married into the family but is now looking for escape and more money no matter what it takes; the Biterman brothers -- Elias, the tough moneylender whose life has left him bitter toward the moneyed classes and Horacio, who grew up in Argentina and never really knew hardship.

And always running through the  background of this novel, the author never lets the reader forget that a) it's difficult to know who to trust under these conditions, b) the power over life and death lies in the hands of the military, and c) anyone, at any time, can become a victim:

In the street below, the army has just set up one of its checkpoints. A jeep blocks the entrance to the street. Two soldiers with machine guns are positioned on each corner in the shadows. Three others have placed themselves a few feet further back and three more stop any car that happens by.  The soldiers search the vehicle thoroughly, demand to see the identification papers of the passengers, split them up and bombard them with questions.  The officers hunt for inconsistencies in their stories, for firearms, documents, evidence of something whatever. The slightest grounds for suspicion means being thrown in the back of a van and driven to one of many clandestine military prisons spread across the city, to undergo a deeper, more pressing interrogation....Time passes by, ...the streets are empty, the soldiers, trained for action, grow bored and distracted, until at last the approach of a car brings them to attention. They aim their guns at the heads of the civilians in the car, their trigger fingers twitching as they feel their own fear levels rise, fear being the food that nourishes the soldier.

Although the book is not lengthy, it is extremely compelling and one you won't soon forget. Mallo's writing is excellent and more to the point, realistic: he is able to communicate this brief episode in a horrible period of Argentine history succinctly yet powerfully.   I'd recommend it to people interested in this time period, or readers of translated crime fiction or translated fiction in general.

 fiction from Argentina