Betty Boo

December 14, 2015
At the start of this thought-provoking mystery from Piñeiro (A Crack in the Wall), maid Gladys Verela arrives at the Maravillosa Country Club, where industrialist Pedro Chazaretta has a house on the grounds. In the living room, Gladys spots Chazaretta sitting in a chair, apparently asleep, but in fact his throat has been slit. Lorenzo Rinaldi, the editor of the newspaper El Tribuno, approaches novelist Nurit Iscar, “the Dark Lady of Argentine literature” who’s known as Betty Boo, about covering Chazaretta’s murder. Nurit joins forces with an inexperienced young reporter, who’s disparagingly referred to only as Crime Boy, and Jaime Brena, a cynical veteran crime reporter who has been shunted off to the society desk. The members of this mismatched trio share insights and realize that several more deaths share a connection with Chazaretta’s. In Piñeiro’s artful hands, each of her investigators learns as much about himself or herself as about the murder on the way to the surprising, perfectly executed ending.

February 1, 2016
Mystery writer Nurit Iscar hasn't fully recovered from the bad reviews of the love story she wrote while in the throes of an affair with newspaper editor Lorenzo Renaldi. It's only the promise of a much-needed paycheck that makes her agree to write a series of articles about the murder of a wealthy businessman in one of Buenos Aires' prestigious gated communities. With veteran journalist Jaime Brena and the newspaper's young crime editor, Nurit traces the connection between the victim and several of his schoolmates, who have all died recently, supposedly accidentally. Pineiro (A Crack in the Wall, 2013) writes page-long paragraphs with shifting points of view, sliding fromonecharacter to another to show what each is doing at the same point in time. The characters' response to the mystery's resolution is surprising for a psychological suspense novel, but also very real. This isn't a good fit for readers demanding fast pacing, but those willing to take the time to enjoy the style and the unusual denouement will find themselves wondering why more crime authors don't take the kinds of risks Pineiro does.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)