opfscale.blogg.se

I say this because one of the early descriptions from my UK publisher said gangster. He's not affiliated with organized crime. One of the POV characters, Elvis, is a member of The Hawks, this was a paramilitary group that was used by the Mexican government to attack, torture and kill protesters. The book takes place at the beginning of the Dirty War in Mexico. What is the real life context of this novel? The Mexican government was engaged in the suppression of rock music in Mexico at the same time it was attacking students and activists. VELVET WAS THE NIGHT is historical, simmering noir and its theatre is not the domestic but a vast city in turmoil.īrief thread on the noir on Twitter.

Domestic noirs tend to focus on upper class, white, women and often deal with the home as a space of danger/conflict. Noir is also confused with its younger cousin, domestic noir. Nino Frank says noirs are "essentially psychological narratives with the action-however violent or fast-paced-less significant than faces, gestures, words-than the truth of the characters.” Here is a book club kit with more info on the time period and background of this novel. Velvet Was the Night is historical and noir.

Selected for CBC Canada Reads longlist, one of the best books of the year according to The New York Times Book Review. The US edition comes with a moody stepback cover (second, interior cover) by Karla Ortiz.Ī finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Because Mexico in the 1970s is a noir where life is cheap and the price of truth is high.įrom the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic comes a simmering historical noir about a daydreaming secretary, a lonesome enforcer, and the mystery of the missing woman they’re both desperate to find. Swirling in parallel trajectories, Maite and Elvis attempt to discover the truth behind Leonora’s disappearance, encountering hitmen, government agents, and Russian spies. When Elvis is assigned to find Leonora, he begins a blood-soaked search for the woman-and his soul. Mexico in the 1970s is a politically fraught land, even for Elvis, a goon with a passion for rock ’n’ roll who knows more about kidney-smashing than intrigue. When her next-door neighbor, the beautiful art student Leonora, disappears under suspicious circumstances, Maite finds herself searching for the missing woman-and journeying deeper into Leonora’s secret life of student radicals and dissidents. Mexico in the 1970s is a dangerous country, even for Maite, a secretary who spends her life seeking the romance found in cheap comic books and ignoring the activists protesting around the city.