Ernesto Mallo

There's a low burn violence to many of these realist stories set in Buenos Aires. Ariel Magnus's "Ex Officio" was memorable to me for the scene of a cop watching a mugging unfold from a distance, unmoved or unperturbed by the sight--doing nothing to help. In another story, Veronica Abdala's "Orange Is a Pretty Color," a woman watches, sociopathically unmoved, while her lover dies of a heart attack. The trope of people watching pain and misery unfold in front of them, impassively, was a show more recurring one. Be careful in Buenos Aires? show less

In 1976 Argentina’s Dirty War had begun and its environment of state-sponsored illegal arrests, torture, killing and forced disappearances provides a brutal backdrop for what would otherwise be a simple tale of a policeman investigating a murder. Superintendent Lascano is asked to follow up on a report of two bodies being found but when he arrives at the site there are three bodies. Two are of young people who were clearly killed by the Junta’s death squads and their deaths will not be show more investigated further but the third body is an older man’s which appears to have nothing to do with the others. It is this death that Lascano decides to investigate and he learns it is the body of an Auschwitz survivor who is now an almost universally loathed money-lender.

I have ranted at length about the enormous (seemingly unedited) tomes that are produced in such numbers these days so it is worth noting that I did a little happy dance when I opened this book on my eReader and found it to be 192 pages short. If anyone needs evidence that an engaging, thoughtful story can be told in less than a house brick sized lump they need look no further than the rather haunting Needle in a Haystack. Told from the perspective of several different characters and not in chronological order, the story comes together as a kind of literary jigsaw puzzle with some pieces being found early and having to lie on the table for a while, awaiting their connecting pieces to appear before the full picture could become clear. The book’s snappy length enabled this to be a very successful storytelling mechanism.

There are very memorable characters here, both good and evil. Lascano is a widower who has struggled to come to terms with his wife’s death and the scenes describing his home, from which nothing of hers has been removed, are sad but very credible. His determination to his job, in the face of widespread corruption and overt threats is also credibly portrayed. Some of the most memorable characters have only fleeting appearances, like the General’s wife who thinks the baby she has adopted hates her, but they are all beautifully drawn.

I must admit I found the long blocks of italicised text which eschewed quotation marks and other punctuation a little off-putting as they slowed down my reading pace and I’m still not sure what the format was meant to add to the story. Also the sex scene which spoke of Lascano’s ‘sex being reborn and wanting to fly’ just made me laugh and the schmaltzy tone of the whole scene seemed out of place with the rest of the book. Overall though these are minor quibbles about an excellent book which is both a sound mystery and an unsentimental depiction of what must have been a horrifying time to live through. show less

The cover shows President Menem riding a plane marked "Republica Argentina" (rather than Aerolíneas Argentinas) that is on fire and about to crash into the middle of Buenos Aires. Menem's head is tacked onto somebody else's body. I quite like the cover. That Argentina is going to the dogs, the politicians are wrecking the country is a given. You don't have to talk to an Argentinian more than 0.3 of a second before they tell you that. You can join in too, and it's refreshing that one show more nationality is not overly sensitive to what foreigners say about them.

To the novel: Mallo is a good writer, but there are too many characters here. I'm looking for a Latin American author who can keep themselves to a tight, straight forward narrative. Magical realism, a narrator writing a novel about the story then gets pulled into the story, no full stops (Fernanda Melchor), and archaic vocab are all things which can trip me up when I read in Spanish. I also favour a straight forward story in general. The French seem to be able to do it. Camus, Sartre, Duras, Houellebecq, Voltaire for God's sake - profound yet easy to follow. I was relieved once to read a Vargas Llosa book in English and still get lost; I like a lot of his books but think he would have been better off without magical realism.

In Me Verás Caer characters enter as protagonists and then are left alone until way later in the book, some never come back. The portrait of Carlos (Menem), the president who just wants to party, is amusing. The baddies are a bit too evil to be interesting, and the use of a Islamic terrorist to kill the hero by chance was lazy - although I get the author was referencing one of the big events of the 90s, the bombing of AMIA, the Israeli association in Argentina.

At times I was anxious to know what would happen next. However, this novel is a bit like the story of Argentina: an impressive amount of talent, skill and resources leading nowhere. I have a feeling some of Mallo's other novels are good though. The title of the book comes from Soda Stereo's song Ciudad de la Furia, the most famous rock track about Buenos Aires. Along with Gustavo Cerati of Soda Stereo, Emile Cioran, one of my favourite philosophers, is quoted in the epigraph. show less

Like Akashic's other Noir series Buenos Aires Noir does not disappoint. I found many entertaining and engrossing reads in this anthology. Ex Officio and Fury of the Worm were two of my favorites, though A Face In the Crowd, Orange Is a Pretty Color and Eternal Love were at the top of my list as well.
What happens when an off duty officer investigates a gun shot heard in his apartment building may surprise you in Ex Officio. In Fury of the Worm a powerful drug czar punishes a child molester show more in a most gruesome manner while the victims unwilling father is encouraged to participate. This story is not for the faint of heart, but the writing definitely hits the noir style on the head.
I found that true of so many stories in this anthology. Ernesto Mallo did an excellent job with story/writer selection. Thanks to Akashic for allowing me to review yet another fantastic book in this series. I'm looking forward to whatever's next! show less