THE ADVENTURES OF JUAN PLANCHARD

Having lifted himself above his modest origins through business dealings with a corrupt government, cocky young Venezuelan multimillionaire Juan Planchard soars above his country’s woes—until they hit home.

The year is 2011. At 29, the supremely cynical, trash-talking Juan has life by the tail, jet setting to New York, Havana, and Italy and mixing with the likes of Pedro Almodóvar, Gabriel García Márquez, and Muammar Gaddafi. After he falls instantly in love at a Las Vegas casino with a gorgeous psychology student named Scarlet, he wonders if his life could be any better. The answer is there’s no escaping the dark forces that have turned Venezuela into a land of poverty, oppression, and random violence under the ailing Hugo Chávez. The military has slaughtered “at least twenty thousand” and “ninety-one percent of murderers roam free,” grimly reports Juan, who, despite everything, has an abiding love for his country. He may think that living in the fast lane is a statement of survival, but when his disapproving father is killed and his loving mother abducted—and he discovers the BDSM-loving Scarlet’s naughty streak goes places he didn’t suspect—that chip on his shoulder is replaced by unshakeable remorse. Jakubowicz, a Venezuelan filmmaker, wrote this debut novel after his film Secuestro Express was prosecuted as defamatory by Chávez’s government and he was forced to leave the country. The supercharged book sometimes recalls the scorched-earth jottings of Hunter S. Thompson, but Jakubowicz is too fond of his narrator to achieve those ragged depths. At his lowest, Juan envisions dying like Scarface heavy Tony Montana or Bonnie and Clyde. But we won’t know whether he enjoys such a “grand finale” until the novel’s 2020 sequel gets an English translation.

A brazenly entertaining tale with government corruption in its sights.