The Secret in Their Eyes

August 15, 2011
In Argentinian author Sacheri’s beguiling novel, the basis for the 2010 Academy Award–winning film El secreto de sus ojos, Benjamín Chaparro, a recently retired deputy clerk for Argentina’s investigative court, sets out to write a novel about a case that has haunted him for decades: the 1968 rape and murder of a beautiful young woman, Liliana Colotto. Chaparro’s original investigation into the case became so dangerous that he was forced to flee Buenos Aires until the “Dirty War” officially ended in 1983. Since Liliana’s murder, her devastated widower, Ricardo Morales, has devoted his life to exacting vengeance on his wife’s killer and on the corrupt political machine that enabled the killer to go free. Chaparro’s own unrequited love for Irene Hornos, once an intern and now a powerful judge, gives the Morales case an added resonance. Extracts from Chaparro’s novel in progress blur the line between fiction, reportage, and memoir, as do the other parts of this complex and engaging narrative.