An absorbing—at times almost too absorbing—mystery by a notable Colombian author.
In a remote stretch of southwestern Colombia, Bogota-based journalist Julieta Lezama investigates an ultraviolent confrontation that officials pretend never happened.
Before mysteriously disappearing, an orphaned 14-year-old boy who witnessed the clash tells the 40-ish, trash-talking Julieta how the confrontation ended with a black-attired figure emerging from a bazooka-ed Hummer and escaping in a helicopter. Everyone else in town claims they didn't see or hear anything. All evidence of the confrontation is cleared away. With her assistant, Johana, a veteran of the FARC guerrilla group, Julieta determines that a simmering Mafia-like conflict between a Pentecostal church and an evangelical one had something to do with the roadside drama. The story leads Julieta to French Guiana and Brazil and intense one-on-ones with the churches' corrupt pastors—who, for all their dark edges, win her over with their charisma. Each of them gets to tell his anguished story in long, italicized sections that touch on the "perverse republic" that is Colombia. "When a person screams into the darkness, what reply is possible?" one of them asks. For all that, the book is lifted by its cutting humor, which takes on a dreamy, almost surreal quality. The deeper Julieta gets into the case, the more she drinks, happily aware of what she's doing. For the prosecutor she's working with, the more bodies pile up, the giddier he gets in urging her on. Gamboa can go so deep into a character, such as a pastor obsessed with gold, that he loses the thread of the main narrative. But the book never loses the spark of originality.
An absorbing—at times almost too absorbing—mystery by a notable Colombian author.Pub Date: Nov. 23, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-60945-711-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.
The feds must protect an accused criminal and an orphaned girl.
Maybe you’ve met him before as protagonist of The 6:20 Man (2022): Ex-Army Ranger Travis Devine, who’d had the dubious fortune to tangle with “the girl on the train,” is now assigned by his homeland security boss to protect Danny Glass, who's awaiting trial on multiple RICO charges in Washington state. Devine has what it takes: He “was a closer, snooper, fixer, investigator,” and, when necessary, a killer. These skills are on full display as the deaths of three key witnesses grind justice to a temporary halt. Glass has a 12-year-old niece, Betsy Odom, and each is the other’s only living relative—her parents recently died of an apparent drug overdose. The FBI has temporary guardianship of Betsy, who's a handful. She tells Travis that though she’s not yet 13, she's 28 in “life-shit years.” The financially well-heeled Glass wants to be her legal guardian with an eye to eventual adoption, but what are his real motives? And what happens to her if he's convicted? Meanwhile, Betsy insists that her parents never touched drugs, and she begs Travis to find out how they really died. This becomes part of a mission that oozes danger. The small town of Ricketts has a woman mayor who’s full of charm on the surface, but deeply corrupt and deadly when crossed. She may be linked to a subversive group called "12/24/65," as in 1865, when the Ku Klux Klan beast was born. Blood flows, bombs explode, and people perish, both good guys and not-so-good guys. Readers might ponder why in fiction as well as in life, it sometimes seems necessary for many to die so one may live. And what about the girl on the train? She's not necessary to the plot, but she's a fun addition as she pops in and out of the pages, occasionally leaving notes for Travis. Maybe she still wants him dead.
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781538757901
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.
A routine break-in at the home of Sûreté homicide chief Armand Gamache leads slowly but surely to the revelation of a potentially calamitous threat to all Québec.
At first it seems as if nothing at all triggered the burglar alarm at Gamache’s home in Three Pines; it was literally a false alarm. It’s not till he receives a package containing his summer jacket that Gamache realizes someone really did get into his house, choosing to steal exactly this one item and return it with a cryptic note referring to “some malady…water” and “Angelica stems.” Having already refused to meet with Jeanne Caron, chief of staff to Marcus Lauzon, a powerful politician who’s already taken vengeance on Gamache and his family for not expunging his child’s criminal record, Gamache now agrees to meet with Charles Langlois, a marine biologist with ties to Caron who confesses to a leading role in stealing Gamache’s jacket. Their meeting ends inconclusively for Gamache, who’s convinced that Langlois is hiding something weighty, and all too conclusively for Langlois, who’s killed by a hit-and-run driver as he leaves. The news that Langlois had been investigating a water supply near the abbey of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups sends Gamache scurrying off to the abbey, where the plot steadily thickens until he’s led to ask how “an old recipe for Chartreuse” can possibly be connected to “a terrorist plot to poison Québec’s drinking water.” That’s a great question, and answering it will take the second half of this story, which spins ever more intricate connections among leading players that become deeply unsettling.
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9781250328137
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
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