Overview

From a writer whose work has been praised by Junot Diaz as 'Latin American fiction at its pulpy phantasmagorical finest,' Don't Send Flowers is a riveting novel centred on Carlos Trevino, a retired police detective in northern Mexico who has to go up against the corruption and widespread violence that caused him to leave the force, when he's hired by a wealthy businessman to find his missing daughter. A seventeen-year-old girl has disappeared after a fight with her boyfriend that was interrupted by armed men, leaving the boyfriend on life support and the girl an apparent kidnap victim. It's a common occurrence in the region-prime narco territory-but the girl's parents are rich and powerful, and determined to find their daughter at any cost. When they call upon Carlos Trevino, he tracks the missing heiress north to the town of La Eternidad, on the Gulf of Mexico not far from the U.S. border-all while constantly attempting to evade detection by La Eternidad's chief of police, Commander Margarito Gonzalez, who is in the pockets of the cartels and has a score to settle with Trevino. A gritty tale of murder and kidnapping, crooked cops and violent gang disputes, Don't Send Flowers is an engrossing portrait of contemporary Mexico from one of its most original voices.

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9781611854893

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Reviews

Mr. Solares is a graceful, even poetic, writer, especially in his hard-boiled dialogue and his descriptions of the wildly varied landscapes and ethnic types of northern Mexico. Though the world of The Black Minutes is one to inspire fear and revulsion, Mr. Solares's descriptions of it are oddly beautiful and fascinating in the same way that overturning a rock and observing the maggots beneath can be a perversely edifying spectacle. * New York Times (on The Black Minutes) * A breathless marvelous first novel... Latin American fiction at its pulpy phantasmagorical finest, this is a literary masterpiece masquerading as a police procedural and nothing else I've read this year comes close. Solares does for Latin American literature what Eduardo Lago did for Iberian literature with his monumental novel Llamame Brooklyn. The Black Minutes is that good. -- Junot Diaz * Times Literary Supplement (on The Black Minutes) * A dry, sharp x-ray of the horror of life in the Gulf, the network of complicity, the scope of tragedy. A gritty, direct, exciting novel that is a must-read for anyone who wants to look at the hell that the Gulf (and Mexico at the same time) has become. -- Antonio Ortuno

Author Information

Martin Solares is also the author of The Black Minutes, which was a finalist for France's most prestigious award for crime fiction, the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere, and for the distinguished Spanish-language award, the Romulo Gallegos Prize. He lives in Mexico City.

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