Andean Express

March 2, 2009
In this leisurely, character-driven study set in 1952 from Bolivian author de Recacoechea (American Visa
), a train ride across the high Andean plain serves as the stage for a high-stakes card game, a quick sexual encounter and murder. The dramatic trip across the Antiplano from La Paz, Bolivia, to the Chilean seaport of Arica only incidentally recalls Agatha Christie’s classic Murder on the Orient Express
. The large cast mirrors the political and social scene, including an older businessman and his teenage wife, a skirt-chasing college student, a revolutionary disguised as a priest, expatriates from Ireland and Russia, and a deadly one-legged mine worker who “struck at the floor with his crutches à la Long John Silver, his favorite fictional character.” More Camus than mystery thriller, this novel delights like strong coffee savored in a cosmopolitan cafe.

March 1, 2009
Strangers on a train engage in intrigue, adultery and perhaps the perfect murder.

Even after more than 50 years, Ricardo Beintigoitia vividly recalls the overnight train trip he took in January 1952 from Bolivia near La Paz to the Chilean resort town of Arica. Ricardo, just graduated from high school, encounters a gallery of oversized characters, including that flashy dresser, his uncle Felipe Trllez; strip-club magnate Alfredo Miranda ("The Marquis"), who naturally travels with a small harem of beautiful seductresses; professional poker player Lalo Ruiz; an Eastern European loan shark named Petko Danilov; et al. Indeed, much of the story focuses on the close-quarters verbal duels among these characters, whom de Recacoechea calls a microcosm of Bolivia during the period. Ricardo's head is turned by beautiful young Gulietta Carletti, recently married for financial reasons to the much older Nazario Alderete, a wealthy miner. The sexual chemistry between Gulietta and Ricardo is palpable, and even Gulietta's chaperone Do˜a Clara, who arranged her wedding to Alderete, seems to approve. But Alderete's forbidding reputation poses a big red flag. Darkening the plot considerably is the arrival of bitter cripple Edmundo Rocha, who blames Alderete for ruining his life and vows revenge. Sex, a high-stakes poker game and a murder disguised as a heart attack all figure prominently in the closing chapters.

De Recacoechea's sixth novel and the second translated into English (American Visa, 2007) entertainingly gathers wool for quite a while before the intense finale.

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