This ambitious novel memorably brings together recent history, horrific crimes, and an ever present sense of corruption.
A reporter investigates corruption and wrestles with complex personal entanglements in this tense novel set in 1970s Mexico.
Aguilar Camín’s novel spans more than a decade in the life of its narrator, an unnamed journalist whose slow ascent toward prominence—one character calls him “a national opinionmaker”—acts as a backdrop for the events that follow. The first chapter traces the narrator’s friend Rojano’s slow rise in politics and sets up the complex dynamic between Rojano and his wife, Anabela, for whom the narrator not-so-secretly pines. What emerges from this is an intricate maze of corruption involving land rights, megalomaniacal union officials, crime scene photos of dubious authenticity, and public figures less than concerned with the public good. One particularly sinister figure is fond of the phrase “whoever can add can divide,” which occurs throughout the book, sounding equally inspirational and threatening. The narrator’s world-weary observations crop up again and again: he notes that a man nicknamed Smiley was thus dubbed after a gunshot to the face, which “left him with an indelible smile that couldn’t be wiped off.” That balance of violence and gallows humor infuses the novel. Another character tells the narrator that “history is full of revolutions the police have outlived,” which furthers the cynical mood. Over the course of the novel, Anabela becomes more and more prominent, and the narrator is often left to puzzle over the motivation behind, and truth of, a series of violent acts in the wake of her clashes with a union leader. Aguilar Camín’s fondness for using specific dates in the narrative furthers the sense of realism, even as the novel’s events become more ambiguous.
This ambitious novel memorably brings together recent history, horrific crimes, and an ever present sense of corruption.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-936182-92-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Schaffner Press
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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