An outstanding mystery novel which takes place in the waning days of the Mexican Revolution. The four main protagonists, who mostly interact while playing dominoes, deal with murder, violence, corruption, and an ever changing cast of malevolent characters. Mostly they try to make sense of the city they have come to love and there place in it. The four, (a lawyer, a union organizers, a newspaperman, and poet), together manage to tell the story of a national broken heart. I will let the poet himself try to explain ....

"The poet liked to think of himself and his three friends as something like the tide scum left on the beach at the high-water mark; The indefinable children of a turbulent decade marked by upheaval much bigger than themselves, a series of changes they'd experienced peripherally as spectators, protagonists, and victims"

A great introductory novel to the fiction of Paco Ignacio Taibo II. This edition graced with a lovely cover. ( )

review of
Paco Ignacio Taibo II's The Shadow of the Shadow
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 17, 2019

I can't really praise Paco Ignacio Taibo II's novels enough. They're always politically educational & a 'good read' in the usual engrossing sense.

"He liked the Secret Policemen's Marching Band the best and after that the Mexico City Police Corps Orchestra which, in the time of Police Chief Ramirez Garrido, had learned to play the Internationale with such enthusiasm that it became a regular practice number for them and they would play it when tuning up before their concerts." - p 9

According to typical Taibo fashion, there must really be a Mexican police band that plays the Internationale. That, of course, is a remarkable indicator of Mexican culture.

The 4 friends who populate this novel, whose experiences I've been delighted to read about in other Taibo novels, include a lawyer:

"Or better yet, there's still my translation into Spanish of the great anarchist writer Enrico Malatesta. The proof is in the pudding, as they say. I can still see my Uncle Ernesto foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog when I put a signed and dedicated copy in front of him on the desk. I remember reading out loud to him in a honeyed voice where it says: "The enemy is not he who is born beyond our borders, nor he who speaks a language different than our own, but he who, without any right, seeks to strip away the liberty and independence of others."" - p 21

Indeed. & the censors on the internet, such as those on YouTube, wd be well-advised to consider that.

""As for me, I'm starting to believe less and less in coincidence all the time," said the poet. "First someone kills the damn trombonist, then Manterola here watches the trombonist's brother fall out of a window, and now you get this invitation to the widow's house."" - p 41

Taibo is an expert at tying loose ends together.

"The Chinaman pictured the face of Gómez, chief of the Mexico City gendarmerie, the mounted police, the same man who almost a year ago ordered the police attack on the strikers at the Palacio de Hierro Department Store. The same Gómez who ordered his troops to fire on the militant railroad workers. The black beast, the arch-enemy of the anarcho-syndicalists in the Valley of Mexico." - p 48

Right after the Mexican Revolution, there must've been at least some sympathy for revolutionaries amongst whatever form the revolution put the police in. But by the time of this novel, roughly 70 yrs later, the police had presumably reverted to being thugs for the rich. In other words, the revolution shook things up but when things settled there was entirely too much Business as Usual again.

"THE ANARCHISTS' BALL

"They closed off Rosario Street, parking a car at one end and camouflaging it with a few clay flower pots for appearances' sake. Then they fenced off the other end of the block and set up a security team, revolvers showing in the men's back pockets. Banners hung on the walls with the emblems of the CGT (General Workers Confederation) and the Textile Federation. Security wore red arm bands, the reception committee wore green ones." - p 56

As an anarchist, I loved this description. The novel was written in 1986. I didn't know of such events until I was exposed to them as Take Back the Street, probably in the late 1990s. The 1st one I participated in was in Adelaide, Australia on March 25, 2000. See this movie starting at minute 40:14: https://archive.org/details/1stNonExistentInternationalNeoistApartmentFestivalIn... . Note that even w/ police presence the street event continued unabated & there was no gun violence or any other violence that I'm aware of. The remarkably peaceful & astonishingly tolerant behavior of the Australian police wd be well-emulated in other places.

One thing a good writer might do is toss a speech strangeness into a situation to make the whole thing even stranger still:

""Look into my eyeth," Celeste ordered the poet. "Look deep into my eyeth. You will thee a lake, the blue thea."

"But the widow Margarita's eyes were violet and her skin under her white blouse was even whiter still.

""Ale you sule?"

""A thtitl, calm othean of blue water, with jutht the thofy rocking of the waveth."" - p 89

Having a hypnotist w/ harmful ulterior motives also have a lisp is a nice unexpected touch. Then there's the Chinaman, one of the 4 friends, who was really born in Mexico, but who speaks w/ "l"s substituted for "r"s anyway. He strategizes a way to trick the strike-breakers:

""Let's tuln the tables on them, what do you say? You go tell the colonel that we'le going to open the dool to the mill, and me and the compañeols'll head over to the house where Donadieu's got his scabs and we'll cut them off befole they evel get hele."" - p 93

The poet partially makes his living by writing ad copy:

"["]Best tire in Mexico. Fits every car, every make, every model, good for all. Pelzer model 96-C. We call it THE ONLY ONE."

""The only one?"

""THE ONLY ONE."

""Okay. So what's the deal? Does it cost less, last longer?"

""No, costs more, lasts less. But very good tire, excellent tire.["]" - p 103

So the poet, full of integrity will still write lies & seductive come-ons for capitalism. We're not talking purism here.

"["]But that gentleman over there says he wants to talk to you."

"Manterola followed the bartender's pointing finger and found himself contemplating an elegantly dressed officer, his military jacket and pants impeccably pressed, his stripes shining in the dim light. It was the same man he'd known only a week earlier in the form of a comatose hod carrier." - p 164

The "comatose hod carrier" was the officer in disguise in a bed adjacent to Manterola in a hospital.

"After leaving the union meeting at the Providencia mill, Tomás and San Vicente walked together through the back streets of San Angel. The Chinaman had found a hiding place for himself, Rosa, and San Vicente in a coal yard run cooperatively by a couple of his anarchist friends blacklisted in the local mills." - p 192

Just as the officer appears in a bed, disguised, & then reappears in a later chapter in uniform, San Vicente also appears in Taibo II's Just Passing Through (also 1986) (see my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1087722-sebasti-n-san-vicente ). In the "After the Novel" section Taibo explains:

"Sebastian San Vicente was deported a second time in 1923, following his participation in the heroic streetcar strike. I compiled his brief Mexican biography in Memoria Roja, and again, in novelized form in De Paso (Just Passing Through). It appears that he died years later fighting in the anarchist ranks against the fascists in Spain." - p 231

Oil is POWER in more ways than one:

"Gómez held his hand out to the senator, then saluted the oil barons. He clicked his heels once for Standard Oil of New Jersey, representing a third of all Mexican oil operations, then again for the owner and namesake of Sinclair Oil, and once more for the men from Huasteca Petroleum. With these three brief gestures, he offered up his reverence to what amounted to 30 percent of the entire income of the Mexican treasury" - p 199

But back to the "After the Novel" section:

"The anarcho-syndicalists based in the south of Mexico City won the strike described in this book—and many more, until 1926 when they started to feel the effects of the repression unleashed by the government of President Calles." - p 231

Back to my earlier speculation: "Right after the Mexican Revolution, there must've been at least some sympathy for revolutionaries amongst whatever form the revolution put the police in." If the revolution took place from 1910 to 1920 maybe the positive aftermath of the revolution only lasted from 1920 to 1926.

I highly recommend this author. Consider this:

"PIT II recently collaborated—to international fanfare—with the notorious Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatista Revolutionary Army to resurrect Shayne as hero in the novel The Uncomfortable Dead (Akashic Books)." - p 234

THAT I'd like to read. ( )

1922: Una Ciudad de México a la que la Revolución ha dejado tocada por un viento de locura: militares que quieren hacerse millonarios, estafadores que la Primera Guerra Mundial arrojó a nuestras costas, pistoleros, prostitutas, viudas ricas, barones petroleros dispuestos a comerse un pedazo del país, tenderos gachupines, hipnotizadoras, poetas muertos de hambre, jóvenes porfiristas cambiando de chaqueta, anarquistas, barrios bravos, chinos, tongs, cabarets de tercera, fumadores de opio...
Una gran novela policiaca en un escenario sorprendente.

PIT2 écrit très bien et, aussi, maîtrise parfaitement les codes du genre. Un bon polar, ça commence dans des arrières salles qui sentent la fumée et la sueur mais les méchants sont toujours dans les hautes sphères. Les héros sont des types dur, souvent brisés à l'intérieur, mais opiniâtres et aussi tenaces et méchants que des pitbulls. Les héros sont exactement ça et n'hésiteront ni sur la violence ni sur le meurtre pour arriver à leurs fins. Pour que le lecteur ne se perde pas, la partie hebdomadaire de dominos des personnages - et les dominos, c'est sacré - permet, et pour eux et pour lui, de faire le point sur l'histoire. C'est bien conçu, et l'architecture de chapitres courts permet une lecture très rapide de ce roman, découpé selon une tension forte, nerveuse.
Aussi, l'auteur ne tombe pas dans le piège de Tchekhov : toutes les intrigues ne sont pas reliées. Il y a aussi des intrigues annexes qui permettent de s'interroger et rend plus vivant l'ensemble. Combien de fois, dans un roman, a-t-on l'impression qu'il ne se passait rien avant le début de l'histoire, que tout ce qui se passe a forcément un rapport et qu'il ne se passera rien après la fin ? Ce n'est pas le cas ici. Ces intrigues annexes donnent vie au monde qui tourne autour des personnages et PIT2 arrive à faire vivre ce Mexique particulier, avec tous ses problèmes, ses factions, des difficultés mais aussi ses clichés. Evidemment, connaître un peu l'histoire du pays permettra de savourer certaines allusions, certains détails, mais n'est absolument pas nécessaire.
L'humour de PIT2, au milieu de son polar noir, est là aussi une note tout à fait mexicaine. Ca va mal mais la vie n'est pas finie, alors on va sortir le tequila et la marimba.

Un succulent polar avec des personnages un peu exagérés mais, finalement, représentatifs du Mexique.

Avis plus développé ici : http://hu-mu.blogspot.com/2014/08/un-ombre-qui-sent-la-sueur-et-le-tequila.html ( )