by NickCaistor (Translator), Guillermo Orsi (Author)
It is December 2001 and Argentina is in political and economic meltdown. Pablo Martelli, once in an elite branch of the police force known to all as the 'National Shame', is a shadow of his former self, scraping by as a bathroom salesman. He cannot forget the enigmatic woman he met in a dance hall. She left him when she found out who he was working for, and he has never recovered from the blow. Late one evening, Martelli is summoned to a friend's coastal retreat. He arrives to find his friend dead and is drawn into a bewildering sequence of events, on an odyssey that leads him through vast, empty pampas, along endless highways and into ghost towns seething with danger and brutality, to the ailing heart of his country. Before long he is forced to uncover the truth of his past life. It is a dangerous confession: after all, no-one loves a policeman. A highly original crime novel with a rich, dark humour, a host of extraordinary characters and plenty of smoking guns.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 288
Publisher: Quercus Publishing Plc
Published: 28 Apr 2011
ISBN 10: 0857381474
ISBN 13: 9780857381477
Guillermo Orsi lives and works as a journalist in Buenos Aires. His previous novel Suenos de Perro won the Semana Negra Umbriel Award in 2004. MacLehose Press will publish his next novel, Holy City, in Autumn 2011.
Nick Caistor's many translations from the Spanish include The Buenos Aires Quintet by Manuel Vazquez Montalban and the works of Juan Marse and Alan Pauls.