I unfortunately don’t remember too much of this book, but I enjoyed reading it so 3 stars it is.
This is a stylized noir, with MacGuffins we never see, dames who’ll do you dead, gangsters with guns jumping out of cars, and a vague sense that no matter what happens to our little hill of beans the larger tale won’t skip a beat. Perhaps it’s part of the genre, but I enjoyed that our view into the whole dramatic tale was Maite, a 30-something secretary with frumpy clothes and none of that femme fatale allure to throw a haze over the action.
Maite has no patience for whatever is going on–when she’s scared, she says so. When she’s threatened, she only cares for her own life. In one sense, she and Elvis (a hired gangster who attends peaceful student protests to create the allusion of violence) have that in common–they’re not interested in the larger picture, in what is best for the country/society at large. Elvis wants a big house and is passingly curious what happened to his former colleague. Maite just wants to unload the damn cat.
This is a noir, so it might be a spoiler to talk about the ending–suffice to say, despite my personal beliefs there’s no other way this book could end.