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There are times in life — not many — when you can see, with dizzying clarity, the fatal fork in the road represented by one small act, the catastrophe that lurks behind a trivial decision.
A few weeks ago I posted about the literature in translation I had read so far this year and was surprised to note that I hadn’t read any titles translated from Spanish. Even though I should have saved this book for the Latin American Challenge in 2009, I decided to go ahead and read it because I really wanted a Spanish title on my list for this year.
Guillermo Martinez is a writer I’ve been meaning to read for awhile now because he’s from Argentina (which I visited earlier this year) and he’s also a professor of mathematics (and I’m a geeky former engineer). I had known about his book The Oxford Murders and I plan on reading it in 2009. I really want to know how he combines math with murder in that one!
The Book of Murder isn’t about math, but it does take place in Argentina. It begins with the narrator (who is a novelist) receiving a desperate call from Luciana, a girl who had worked for him previously as a transcriptionist. She has had several tragedies in her life, but she doesn’t believe any of them are accidents. She believes another novelist, Kloster, is the one responsible, and she needs the narrator’s help to prove it. But is Luciana even sane? She has spent time in a mental hospital, after all…
I really enjoyed this book and Martinez’ writing. I’ll definitely be looking forward to The Oxford Murders in 2009.
2008, 224 pp.
(4/5)
