The Black Minutes by Martin Solares strikes a chord with readers and writers both North and South of The Rio Grande. The scenes he creates are all too familiar, to anyone with a more than passing knowledge of Mexico. The crooked cops, the scheming politicians, the bars and clubs with the underworld types always lurking. The pay offs to the police chief, or more diplomatically put, the contributions, are only a presage to the pit where dwells the politics and forces of Justice for Paracuan. And, by extension, for all of Mexico This miasmic vision wafts into the nose of the reader, like over running sewers in the midst of the tropical heat wave covering the mythical town of Paracuan. Which if real would be roughly on the latitude of the Tropic of Cancer.on the eastern Gulf of Mexico. As far as a dirty town with a cast of characters, known mostly by their nicknames (such as: El Travolta, El Maceton (the big flowerpot). El Duende (the forest elf) El Cochiloco (the crazy pig etc. As far as grungy and gritty goes, I would put the town of Paracuan up against Chicago, or New York, or even New Orleans, for that matter.
A horrific child murderer is on the loose and pressure is building, and the one detective “El Musico” and his madrina (that is an unofficial police sidekick) seem to be the only ones interested in finding the real killer. Just like in Africa where the greatest killers of Lions are other lions, so it is in Mexico, where the police are preyed upon by the police of other agencies, in addition to being betrayed by their own comrades… Sometimes its the honest or semi-upright cops that are the men most marked.
At the end of this book you will feel like you’ve been there in a world most of us will never know. The story would not work set in today’s Mexico. The Black Minutes of yesterday’s Mexico shrink in comparison to the hellish chaos of today’s Mexico.
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Read another review from Ricardo Marcos-Serna en Español>>
It´s a great book not ´cause it´s related to Mexico´s shameful reality, but ´cause it´s constructed arround two paralell histories to mix them at the end with the main history. Solares used a great approach to chihuahuan forensic doctor Quiroz Cuarón and tamaulipec musician Rigo Tovar, both getting in the middle of Cabrera´s race to find a murderer.
Myself did write a review about this book and hopefully you may read and comment it at http://www.lecturaexperimental.blospot.com
TY.