Death In Veracruz
A Novel
Hector Aguilar Camin
Chandler Thompson
9781936182947
212 pages
Schaffner Press Inc
Overview
Death in Veracruz is a gritty and atmospheric noir centered on the so-called oil wars of the late 1970s, which pitted the extremely powerful and corrupt government-owned oil cartel against the agrarian landowners in the Tabasco region of Southern Mexico. This novel, translated for the first time in English since its publication 30 years ago, concerns a journalist who investigates the death of a colleague and friend Rojano in a bizarre shooting incident that takes place in a small rural village, and who finds himself up against crooked police and petty government officials bought by the oil conglomerate. But, as he gets deeper and deeper into this Mexican Heart of Darkness, he finds Rojano was not all he seemed, and neither was his widow with whom he falls into a doomed affair.
Author Bio
Héctor Aguilar Camín (born July 9, 1946 in Chetumal) is a Mexican writer, journalist and historian, and author of several novels, among them Death in Veracruz and Galio's War, of which Ariel Dorfman (Death and the Maiden) has exclaimed, "Without hesitation, I would call either one of these a classic of Latin American fiction." His most recent novel, Adios to My Parents was published in Mexico to great critical and popular acclaim in 2014. Death in Veracruz is the first work of his fiction to be translated into English. Chandler Thompson acquired his translating chops in the 1960s as a Peace Corps Volunteer, then while writing news stories in English from raw copy in Spanish and French. He's covered Mexico as a stringer for The Christian Science Monitor and as reporter for The El Paso Times. He translated Death in Veracruz between hearings while working as a court interpreter.
