translated from the Spanish (Argentina) by Amanda Hopkinson – published 2004
This is my second Piglia novel, the other being Target in the Night. Both have been enjoyable, he writes with a certain style of noir that is quite Latin American, always with a strong sense of of location and period of history.
This is based on an actual, but little known heist of a Buenos Aires bank in 1965.
Piglia uses the structure of a documentary to relate the story of the event and, in the larger part of the book, its perpetrators, their associates, and victims. A tense opening sequence describes the heist itself, and introduces the ‘twins’, though they are unrelated and look quite different; “Gaucho” Dorda (‘a born criminal, the man who had been ruined since boyhood’) and Franco “the Kid” Brignone, a cunning, callous and spoiled angel. The two are also lovers. Other members of the gang are memorable as well, their crazy boss Malito, the drug addict “Twisty” Bazan, and playboy “Crow” Mereles.
Piglia excels in a fast-paced tale of the violent robbery itself, the gang’s flight to Montevideo and the resulting siege and gruesome bloodbath. All the while, the background of Buenos Aires and Montevideo in the 1960s play a key part.
My GoodReads score 4 / 5
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