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Title: Who Killed Palomino Molero? by Mario Vargas Llosa, Alfred Mac Adam ISBN: 0-374-52556-0 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 24 June, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (11 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Murder most foul
Comment: The time is the 1950s, the place is Peru, and the victim is a young air force enlisted man named Palomino Molero, in Mario Vargas Llosa's spare, tightly written and excellently constructed whodunit. Palomino Molero, eighteen years old, a guitar player who enchanted everyone for miles around singing boleros, is found brutally tortured and murdered near a local air force base. Two civil guards, Officer Lituma and Lieutenant Silva, try to unravel the crime. Rumors abound all over the place; the victim was involved in smuggling or the like and the higher-ups are covering up the perpetrators. But when Silva and Lituma find out that what Palomino Molero was involved in was not smuggling but a love affair with the daughter of his base commander, the plot thickens in all kinds of ways. Vargas Llosa's book is not only a crime novel but a bitter indictment of the social/racial conflicts of modern Peru, where an airman cannot fall in love with the daughter of a colonel, especially if she is white and he is a cholo (half-breed). Vargas Llosa knows how to leaven his story with comic relief; Lieutenant Silva is hopelessly in love with and shamelessly pursuing the respectably married Dona Adriana, and her revenge on him for his presumption is a riot. The murder is solved, but the townspeople won't accept the truth, and insist that they were right all along; there were "higher-ups" involved. "Higher-ups" indeed. It would be a crime in itself to give the solution away and I'm not going to; suffice to say that Vargas Llosa has written a gem of a murder mystery with an ingenious plot twist. It's a very short novel and shows again that some of the best things come in small packages.
Rating: 4
Summary: strong on story, light on mystery
Comment: First this is a crisp short book that is well worth the time to read. The setting alone is quite different from most mysteries/police procedurals. A peruvian Air Force Airman is brutally murdered and two local Guardia Civil Policeman must find the killer before their small town goes crazy thinking they are protecting the "big guys." They get no help from the Air Force officials. Character devleopment is remarkably good for such a short book and you will grow to appreciate Lituma and the Lieutenant and hope that the first LLosa mystery will include more stories of this pair. My only complaint is that 10 bucks is a lot to ask for a book that will take you 3 hours to read.
Rating: 2
Summary: Cliche' city. Disappointing
Comment: _______________________________________
Picked this one up on a whim, based on cover blurbs & laudatory comments here. Has moments, and the descriptions of Peru in the 50's are interesting -- but the characters are thin, and the dialogue is just awful -- one bad cliche' after another. I can't say if the cliche's are the author's or the translators, but this one wasn't for me. I gave up about halfway through. Caveat lector....
Cheers -- Pete Tillman
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Title: The Garden Next Door by Jose Donoso, Hardie st Martin ISBN: 0802133681 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: February, 1994 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo, Margaret Sayers Peden, Margaret S. Paden ISBN: 0802133908 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: May, 1994 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: The Kingdom of This World by Alejo Carpentier, Harriet De Onis ISBN: 0374521972 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1989 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta : A Novel by Mario Vargas Llosa, Alfred Mac Adam ISBN: 0374525552 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 24 June, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Aura : Bilingual Edition by Carlos Fuentes, Lysander Kemp ISBN: 0374511713 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1986 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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