GALINDEZ

Spanish novelist V†zquez Montalb†n takes on a conspiracy theory here—who was behind the abduction of Jesus de Gal°ndez, the Columbia University professor, once a Basque nationalist, then later a persistent nettle in the side of Dominican dictator Trujillo? A young Yale graduate student, Muriel Colbert, seeks to get at the truth—a search that the CIA is especially eager to foil. First, one unlikely CIA man, a fat poetry connoisseur named Robards, and then a second—an old Miami-based veteran of Realpolitik, Don Angelito Voltaire O'Shea Zarraluqui—work to coerce and contain Colbert and those who've encouraged her. The story shifts from Spain to New York to Santo Domingo to Miami—and at every venue, V†zquez Montalb†n paints a finely novelistic canvas of cynicism and lost illusion. And though it's clear that we are to feel that Colbert is one more victim of the US-designed plot to silence Gal°ndez, V†zquez Montalb†n's artistic skill (which comes through in the density and suppleness of his style, well-rendered by the Christensens) makes his antiheroes—the CIA guys—seem the more magnetic. The book is too rumpled, though, folded in on itself, with little room for air or horizontality. Impressive for its passion and cultural/political digestion—but slow to read, asking the reader for an equal degree of the monomania it itself runs on.