Reseña: Días de combate de Paco Ignacio Taibo II

This post is bilingual, scroll down to see the English language version.

Planeta, 2004 (1976). ISBN: 9788408053811. 232 págs.

La acción se desarrolla en Ciudad de México. A punto de cumplir los treinta y un años, Héctor Belascoarán Shayne, hijo de un capitán de marina vasco y de una cantante irlandesa de folk, acaba de separarse de su mujer y ha dejado su trabajo de ingeniero en la General Electric para convertirse en investigador privado. Compró su licencia de detective en una academia de enseñanza a distancia. Comparte oficina con un plomero, no tiene clientes y está obsesionado con encontrar a un asesino o asesina en serie que estrangula a sus víctimas. Las víctimas son todas mujeres. Tiene dinero para tres meses más de alquiler, después tendrá que arrastrarse a su empleo anterior o encontrar uno nuevo. Como Hernán Cortés ha quemado todas sus naves.

El asesino o asesina en serie repite siempre el mismo modus operandi. Ha estrangulado a seis mujeres probablemente desconocidas. El primer crimen hace un mes, diez días después el segundo, y diez días más tarde, el tercer asesinato. Después, el tiempo entre los delitos ha disminuido. Los tres últimos tuvieron lugar la semana pasada. Pero no pudo encontrar ningún patrón, sólo seis notas firmadas por cerevro. La falta de ortografía de cerebro parece una burla, la quinta nota estaba corregida. Con el fin de encontrar el estrangulador Héctor participa en un concurso de televisión con el tema “grandes estranguladores en la historia del crimen”, ofreciéndose como cebo.

Con Días de combate, publicada en 1976, hizo su debut como novelista Paco Ignacio Taibo II, la primera de una serie protagonizada por Héctor Belascoarán Shayne, detective privado. que continuó con Cosa fácil (1977), No habrá final feliz (1981), Algunas nubes (1985), Regreso a la misma ciudad y bajo la lluvia (1989), Amorosos fantasmas (1989), Sueños de frontera (1990), Desvanecidos difunytos (1991), Adiós, Madrid (1993) y Muertos incómodos (2004-2005).

Días de combate es un libro para leer despacio, sin prisa, disfrutando de su prosa. No es un libro sencillo y es a veces irregular en su desarrollo, pero tanto el personaje principal como la descripción de México en 1975 son muy atractivos. He encontrado esta novela poderosa, evocadora y sugerente, aunque está lejos de ser perfecta en mi opinión. No obstante estoy deseando leer el resto de los libros de la serie.

Días de comabate ha sido reseñado en El blog de Alberto Calvo, y en Rest in Peace, entre otros.

Mi califiación: 3/5.

Paco Ignacio Taibo II en Wikipedia

Editorial Planeta México

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Days of Combat, by Paco Ignacio Taibo II

The action takes place in Mexico City. At about to turn thirty-one years, Hector Belascoarán Shayne, son of a Basque sea captain and an Irish folk singer, has just break away from his wife and quit his job at General Electric as an engineer to become a private investigator. He bought his detective license in a distance learning academy. He shares an office with a plumber, has no customers and is obsessed with finding a serial killer that strangles his/her victims. The victims are all women. He has money for three more months of rent, then he will have to crawl to his old employment or find a new one. As Hernán Cortés he has burned all his ships.

The serial killer repeats always the same MO. She/he has strangled six women, probably unknown to him/her. The first one a month ago, ten days after the second one,  and ten days later the third murder. After, the time between crimes has decreased. The last three took place the last week. But he could not find any pattern, only six notes signed by “cerevro”. The misspelling of cerebro seems a mockery, the fifth note was corrected. In order to find the strangler Hector participates in a TV quiz show with the theme “great stranglers in the history of crime”, offering himself as bait.

With Days of combat, published in 1976, made ​​his debut as a novelist Paco Ignacio Taibo II, the first in a series featuring Hector Belascoarán Shayne, private investigator, followed up with by Cosa fácil, 1977 (English title: An Easy Thing), No habrá final feliz, 1981 (English title: No Happy Ending), Algunas nubes, 1985 (English title: Some Clouds), Regreso a la misma ciudad y bajo la lluvia, 1989 (English title: Return to the Same City), Amorosos fantasmas (1989), Sueños de frontera, 1990 (English title: Frontera Dreams), Desvanecidos difuntos (1991), Adiós, Madrid (1993) y Muertos incómodos, 2004-2005 (English title: The Unconfortable Dead).

Days of combat is a book to be read slowly, leisurely, enjoying it’s prose. It’s not a straightforward book and is sometimes irregular in its development but both the main character and the description of Mexico in 1975 are quite attractive. I’ve found this novel powerful, evocative and suggestive, even if it’s far from perfect in my view. However I look forward to reading the rest of the books in the series.

Paco Ignacio Taibo II in Wikipedia

I’ve Just Downloaded On My Kindle

Todo Belascoarán (Planeta Mexico, 2010) by Paco Ignacio Taibo II, it is conformed by the following titles: Días de combate, Cosa fácil, Algunas nubes, No habrá final feliz, Regreso a la misma ciudad y bajo la lluvia, Amorosos fantasmas, Sueños de frontera, Desvanecidos difuntos and Adiós, Madrid; a tribute that brings together the stories of the most famous detective in Mexican crime fiction.

For additional information see my previous posts: 2012 Crime Fiction Alphabet T is for Taibo, Paco Ignacio Taibo (PIT) II and Hector Belascoaran Shayne.

Amazon.es

2012 Crime Fiction Alphabet T is for Taibo, Paco Ignacio Taibo (PIT) II

The Crime Fiction Alphabet arrives this week to letter “t”, and my T is for Taibo. Paco Ignacio Taibo II or PIT as he likes to be called, was born in Asturias, Spain in 1949. His parents emigrated to Mexico in 1958. Taibo’s political loyalties were cemented in the student movement of 1968 (Boston Review). PIT is most widely known as a crime novelist, the author of a book series featuring Hector Belascoarán Shayne, a fictional private eye. For additional information about the Belascoarán series read An Easy Thing by Paco Ignacio Taibo II. The nine books (click on the English title for a brief summary) in chronological order, as far as I know, are:

• Días de combate (1976)
• Cosa fácil (1977) English translation: An Easy Thing (2002)
• Algunas nubes (1985) English translation: Some Clouds (2002)
• No habrá final feliz (1985) English translation: No Happy Ending (2003)
• Regreso a la misma ciudad y bajo la lluvia (1989) English translation: Return to the Same City (2007)
• Amorosos fantasmas (1989)
• Sueños de frontera (1990) English translation: Frontera Dreams (2002)
• Desvanecidos difuntos (1991)
• Adiós Madrid (1993) (The only novel that is not located in Mexico City)

Paco Ignacio Taibo II at Wikipedia

Paco Ignacio Taibo II at Mis detectives favorit@s (in Spanish).

Días de comabate (Planeta 2004) is on my TBR shelf and I look forward to reading it soon, stay tuned.

The blurb reads: This month of July, the most emblematic detectives dare to answer these questions. A month dedicated to crime and mystery, a fine selection of titles from the great authors of the genre. The best tribute to a wonderful genre: crime fiction. A women strangler is on the loose in the city of Mexico. Hector Belascoarán Shayne, a retired engineer by his own will who has turned into a private eye, tries to stop the murderer. The only clues to decipher these crimes are the notes found on the victim’s corpses signed under the pseudonym “Cerevro”. (My free translation).

There is a Kindle edition Todo Belascoarán (in Spanish) available at Amazon.es and Amazon.com that includes: Días de combate, Cosa fácil, Algunas nubes, No habrá final feliz, Regreso a la misma ciudad y bajo la lluvia, Amorosos fantasmas, Sueños de frontera, Desvanecidos difuntos and Adiós, Madrid.

The 2012 Crime Fiction Alphabet is a Community Meme hosted by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise. By Friday of each week participants try to write a blog post about crime fiction related to the letter of the week. Click HERE to visit other suggestions from fellow participants.

Are Latin America open ended crime fiction books a new genre?

Peter Rozovsky brought an interesting comment to my post: Interview with Luiz Alfredo García-Roza:

“I like what he has to say about his crime stories being open texts. This goes somewhat against that old suggestion that crime novels restore a social order ruptured by crime.
But Garcia-Roza is just one among contemporary crime writers for whom mystery means more than just a puzzle to be solved.”

I presume these are García-Roza words:

“… A murder is not a problem, or at least, it is not only a problem to be solved, but it is also an enigma, in the same sense that ancient Greeks conceived the enigma: something that holds the truth but also holds the shadow side of the sentence, the ambiguity and the silence. So, I hope my readers are left with a vivid sensation of an open story. The sense of the story is always given by the reader, not by the writer. The writer gives only the text, and the richness of a fictional text is its capacity to produce countless senses and meanings. There is no final meaning.”

This seems to me an interesting comment since some scholars propose a new name for this genre: Spanish American alternative detective fiction. For example in a paper called La novela policial alternativa en Hispanoamérica, Diego Trilles Paz writes:

“Despite the great popularity and increased prestige of classic detective fiction, as well as the American hard-boiled novel, since their introduction in the nineteenth century many readers and authors have perceived them as genres incompatible with Latin American realities. The inherent conventions of the whodunit, the presence of a detective whose legitimacy is never in doubt, and its conservative ideology, which presupposed the punishment of criminality and the reestablishment of the status quo, were incongruous in societies in which people had no faith in justice. The genre, then, was regarded as unrealistic for third world countries. In this way, in order to be plausible, the detective novel in Latin America needed a different approach.

In broad terms, these pages propose the emergence of a new genre that can be observed in the works of contemporary authors such as Vicente Leñero’s Los albañiles (1963), Ricardo Piglia’s Nombre falso (1975), Jorge Ibargüengoitia’s Las muertas (1977) and, most notably, in Roberto Bolaño’s Los detectives salvajes (1998), which I consider the most prominent and complex example of this type. The present study examines how this innovative Spanish American detective fiction incorporates and restates some of the structures and conventions of the hard-boiled novel and shares some features of contemporary Spanish American fiction, while developing its own characteristics in contrast with both detective fiction schools. Due to the necessity of the native writers to adopt, formally and thematically, alternative approaches when creating credible detective stories, I have named this emergent genre: Spanish American alternative detective fiction.”

Although others like Franklin Rodriguez  The Bind Between Neopolicial and Antipolicial, called it Neopolicial:

“Critics like Braham, and writers such as Paco Ignacio Taibo II and Leonardo Padura Fuentes, promote the notion of the neopoliciaco. This concept refers to the self-conscious appropriation of structures and elements from the detective genre and to how these appropriations can lead to the creation of original detective stories rather than literary parodies. The neopoliciaco focuses on political and social criticism of the State and society, organized in part around the events of 1968 in Mexico, the Cuban struggles, particularly after 1989, and the dictatorships in Latin America during the 1970s and 1980s. In the neopoliciaco the traditional central role of the detective or the criminal event is combined with an exhaustive examination of the struggles of communities and secondary characters, usually associated with marginal situations. The figure of the detective as restorer of order and executor of the law is inverted in favor of balanced questioning and exposition of all the characters or institutions involved in the crime.”

My question is: Do you see open ended crime fiction stories as a new genre? Is there a similar trend in other countries? Can you give examples of some open ended crime fiction books/writers?

Hector Belascoaran Shayne

Hector Belascoaran Shayne is Paco Ignacio Taibo II fictional private-eye. Most of the information I was gathering in order to write about Hector Belascoaran Shayne seems to me pretty well summarised in this post:  An Easy Thing by Paco Ignacio Taibo II, I won’t do it any better. Hector Belascoaran series includes the following titles:

Días de combate (1976)

Cosa fácil (1977) English translation: An Easy Thing (2002)

Algunas nubes (1985) English translation: Some Clouds (2002)

No habrá final feliz (1981) English translation: No Happy Ending (2003)

Regreso a la misma ciudad y bajo la lluvia (1989) English translation: Return to the Same City (2007)

Amorosos fantasmas (1989)

Sueños de frontera (1990) English translation: Frontera Dreams (2002)

Desvanecidos difuntos (1991)

Adiós Madrid (1993) (The only novel that is not located in Mexico City)

Muertos incómodos (2004-2005) English translation: The Uncomfortable Dead (2006)

Paco Ignacio Taibo II at Wikipedia