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2000s: The most iconic figure in Chilean crime fiction heads down a dark alley of lost love, corruption, and murder.
2000s: The most iconic figure in Chilean crime fiction heads down a dark alley of lost love, corruption, and murder.
Private investigator Heredia has many phantoms—and one of his most haunting has come calling. Argentine investigative journalist Fernanda Arredondo, an old flame he loved and lost, needs to see him after saying goodbye years ago. All it takes is a single day for Heredia to lose her again when she’s found dead—an apparent suicide in a lonely hotel room in Santiago.
Heredia has more than his instincts to tell him that it was murder. He has clues. Like the suspicious death in the same hotel weeks before of a North American journalist specializing in uncovering covert military affairs. Both he and Fernanda were trailing an explosive story—chemical weapons tied to the Latin American arms industry—and they won’t be the last to die.
Now Heredia is following their secrets by infiltrating the most powerful and dangerous criminal network in Chile. Exposing it is Heredia’s business. Avenging Fernanda’s murder is personal. For a man with so few illusions left, surviving it is up to fate.
The city of Santiago comes to life in this book. The dark bits and the shady, dusty parts mainly, but then this is Heredia’s city and you still get to explore the city in some detail.
“From the heights, Santiago was a party, and even though it didn’t have the magic of Hemingsway’s Paris. there were still two or three places left where one could drink without being assaulted by the harsh music of vendors trying to sell their wares for a few coins. There were also streets clogged with vehicles, and smog that imposed itself like the heavy gallop of the first conquistadors.”
But then, the city is also a deception:
“The hidden side of a fake coin. Below me was another city, and it was enough to walk back down into my neighbourhood with its bars and the moldy smell that woke me each morning before the pigeons on the roof started cooing.”
Destination: Chile, Santiago, Author/guide: Ramon Diaz Eterovic Departure: 2000s
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