The Dead Girls, by Jorge Ibargüengoitia

 

9781509870172

Picador, 2018

originally published 1977 as Las muertas

translated by Asa Zatz

194 pp

paperback

(read in April -- slowly but steadily trying to catch up)

Wandering through my bookshelves one afternoon looking for something off the beaten path, I found this book, which I'd completely forgotten that I owned. I picked it up, started reading and completed it almost overnight because I couldn't put it down.  It is goes well beyond mere crime fiction into a realm of its own.  

The Dead Girls opens with four people in a "cobalt-blue car" making a long trip to the small town of Tuxpana Falls.   The group arrives at San Juan del Camino where the only woman in the group goes into the church there and offers a prayer for "good luck" in a particular "undertaking," which will happen within the next three hours.   In Tuxpana Falls, one of the group asks a woman where he might find a bakery, learning in return that there are actually three in the town.  It's at the third of these that they find the object of their search, a certain Simón Corona; it's also there where all hell starts to break loose as the woman, Serafina Baladro, is handed a gun and starts shooting.  While Corona and another woman who works at the bakery take cover under the counter, one of Serafino Baladro's companions sets the bakery on fire.   Serafina and the three men go back to the car and drive away.  As the police ask questions, it turns out that the shooter was no stranger to Simón Corona  -- he had lived with Serafina on and off in the past, until the last time when they'd traveled together to Acapulco and he'd finally called it quits and left.  In a strange twist, two weeks after the shooting, officials called for a second round of questioning with the baker that ended up costing him a six-year stint in prison.  

What unfolds as the author reveals the reasons behind the shooting and Simón Corona's imprisonment is the story of two sisters who own a couple of brothels in rural Mexico.   While "All the characters are imaginary," as the author notes before the novel even begins, "Some of the events described herein are real."  The real-life inspiration for The Dead Girls is the story of the Poquianchis, four sisters, who like the Baladro sisters in the book, owned several brothels.  During the course of their operations between 1945 and 1964, they are known to have been responsible for 91 deaths, although the article I've linked to above notes that the body count might actually be as high as 150.  Ibargeüngoitia's version of the story is not simply a retelling, as he has constructed a narrative moving back and forth in time, incorporating testimony, police reports, interrogations and other forms of reportage that give the novel a sort of true-crime feel, while at the same time bringing into focus the corruption and other factors that allowed it all to happen.  It's a dark book, to be sure, but while reading it's almost impossible not to laugh at some points.  It has a sort of absurdist, black-comedy aspect that made me feel horribly guilty every time I'd feel a chuckle coming on. In its own way, it also offers more than a bit of stinging social criticism, examining issues that continue to plague Mexico today.  

I can most definitely recommend The Dead Girls to readers who want more out of their crime fiction and who enjoy books based on real events, as well as to readers who, like me, enjoy Latin American literature in general.  I loved this book. 

The Black Jersey, by Jorge Zepeda Patterson

9781984801067
Random House, 2019
originally published as Maillot Negro
Translated by Achy Obejas
312 pp

hardcover


The narrator of this account, Marc Moreau, says close to its beginning that

"We understood that every so often there would be an annus horribilus, a cursed year, for the Tour de France. By the time we finished the first four stages of the tour, we would start to suspect that this could be the worst of all." 

He's not joking -- the mystery within this novel centers around the attempts to discover who is responsible  for a string of horrific incidents, some deadly, among the cyclists competing in that year's Tour.  Moreau, a domestique for Team Fonar,  is asked by French police Commissioner Favre to assist him in trying to solve the case, since Favre believes that "the killer or killers belong to the circuit."  As he notes, those responsible have "struck with surgical precision to maximize their effect on the results of the race."  He's come to Marc not only because of his background in the military police, but because he's on the inside.  The executive director of the Tour is also hopeful that Marc will help since these accidents, as he puts it, are  "the most serious threat to the Tour de France in all its history."   Somewhat reluctantly he agrees to do as they ask. 

Had the author left it there, the mystery and its solution would have been satisfying enough, but this is definitely not your average crime novel, not by any stretch.  It is a very human story, and Marc is much more than an insider helping the police.  At the heart of this novel is the close relationship between Moreau and  Team Fonar's star cyclist Steve Panata,  with Marc destined over the years to be Steve's protector and domestique, doing anything and everything to ensure Steve's victories in the Tour.   As he and the police uncover evidence leading toward finding the "killer among you," Marc also comes to as the blurb notes, the "sickening realization" that everything that's happened has been to the benefit of his own team.  That's bad enough, but he also finds himself having to battle his own feelings for the good of the team, and he is under a huge amount of pressure to leave his role as second fiddle and go onto victory in his own right. 

I'm not a huge sports fan at all, I'm a ten-mile-ride-is-my-limit sort of cyclist so I can't speak to what he's  done right or not here as far as the Tour de France, but the decision made by the author to use this exacting competition as the milieu for his story turned out to be a good one.  As he says in this interview with The Spain Journal, the Tour

"takes the passions to the limit. Emotions are bare wires when competing for something that demands so many sacrifices.  Love, ambitions, loyalty or betrayals are over-dimensioned." 

 All of  what the author says in this short bit of quotation is made so vividly real in this novel, along with the intensity of the competition, to the point where, as also noted in that interview (although I'm thinking he meant "rider," not "runner'),

"If a runner is willing to kill himself, descending a mountain at 90 kilometers per hour on precarious roads and huge abysses, why would he not be willing to kill for it?"

The author did such a fine job here that even I had no idea who was trustworthy and who was not, and I never guessed the who.  I will say that I had to go back when all was revealed and read that part again (it's a little complicated and it was a wee bit on the murky side), but there was still one more  shocking and unexpected surprise in store even after all became known. 

The Washington Post featured this book in June as one of "9 Picks for Your Beach Bag," but I would consider this novel as way more than just a fun summer read.  The author's  intense focus on the people here made this a novel I won't soon forget. 

The Black Minutes, by Martín Solares

9780802170682
Black Cat (Grove/Atlantic), 2010
433 pp
translated by Aura Estrada and John Pluecker

The setting of this novel is Mexico, in the city of Paracuán, a fictional port town,where "everything good disappears right when it's about to arrive."  It is a town where graft, corruption, and violence are an every day reality, where justice is just another word rather than a true concept.   While the police there are busy investigating crimes, the politicians ensure that if the drug cartels are involved, the police direct their attention elsewhere, often leading to the arrest and sentencing of otherwise innocent people.  Journalists who question the system are about as welcome as the plague. 

It is one such journalist who is at the heart of this mystery.  Bernardo Blanco died during an investigation into a case of multiple homicides that had occurred twenty years earlier.  At that time, a number of young girls were killed by a man known only at the time as "The Jackal." The crimes were particularly gruesome, and Blanco, it seems, was on to the true identity of the man and was researching and writing a book.  When he is found murdered, the police chief puts Agent Ramón "Macetón" Cabrera on the case, "the only subordinate, who, in his opinion, could still be trusted." The chief's choice of lead investigators doesn't sit well with another police detective, Agent Chávez, and throughout the story, Cabrera finds himself in a precarious position both physically and politically for good reason: in Paracuán, between the power of the local drug cartel, the politicians in its pockets, the powerful business interests and the criminals whose crimes are often ignored, an honest cop is a rarity.  His questioning begins to produce some interesting leads, but just when he feels he's starting to get somewhere, he's pulled off the case.  It isn't long before Cabrera finds himself in a hospital after his car is deliberately rammed by a pickup -- it seems someone else doesn't want Cabrera on the case either.   As the novel progresses, Solares takes his readers back to the 20-year old Jackal case and its investigation by Detective Vicente Rangel, a former bar musician turned cop.  The story runs along two parallel courses, and eventually both plotlines are united. 

Yet while the book is definitely a novel of crime fiction on the noir side of a police procedural, it also takes several surreal turns.  There are several areas where Solares introduces what is in the minds of the characters via their subconscious, the only orderly respite they have from all of the disorder of the society in which they exist. For example, Rangel brings in a known criminologist, Dr. Quiroz Cuarón, called "The Mexican Sherlock Holmes" by Time Magazine. Cuarón is this close to solving the case, but is plagued by a strange man in black before he can give Rangel his answer.  He also carries antidotes to known poisons in his first aid kit, which comes in handy when he suspects a conspiracy against him. Then there's the story of the author B. Traven (most known for his The Treasure of the Sierra Madre), one of the most famous visitors to Paracuán, who describes in detail how he came to be there, straight out of his novel The Death Ship. And if that's not enough, there are constant references to UFOs and the UFO craze.  But the writing is not random -- at the novel's heart is a look at a corrupt system that Solares seems to pin not only on the influence of the drug cartels, but on the presidency of Luis Echeverria -- a leader well known for his link to the cartels, for corruption and graft, and especially for the brutality of his special forces.  The book truly is, as Junot Diaz notes in his little blurb, "Latin American fiction at its pulpy phantasmagorical finest," but in an outstanding sort of serious way.

Frankly, it's tough to believe that this is Solares' first novel, because it is so intense and so captivatingly well written.  The Black Minutes is a mix of crime fiction and literature; simultaneously, it's an indictment of the corruption and the lack of the chance for real justice in a country where the police seem to be powerless due to several factors, most notably politics and the power of the drug cartels. It also predicts an uncertain future for the lives of Mexican citizens and for the country in general.  The novel is dark, edgy and downright unputdownable, and if you're a reader of crime fiction who doesn't mind the occasional trip into the human psyche or into politics, I highly recommend it. If you don't read crime fiction for the writing but rather the crime, you might still like it... there are enough suspects, a desire to get to the truth of it all, and the why behind the crimes, all classic elements of mystery and crime writing. Personally speaking, however, the crime aspect began to take on more of a secondary role as I got to the end  of the book, and  I came to see it more as a vehicle through which Solares could examine this most distressing situation that currently exists in his country.  

fiction from Mexico