One of my employees recommended this book to me after reading it herself. I had a hard time with it. I didn't feel like I cared about any of the characters to keep me wanting to read it to see what happened to him/her next. ( )

First book I have ever read set in Paraguay and I really enjoyed this novel. A first it was quite difficult to keep all the characters straight but as I read on it became easier. Between 1863 and 1870
Paraguay fought against Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, Paraguay lost 90% of it's male population which is the beginning of this mystery, and the small town of Santa Caterina is starving for food. There is a murder of an important man, and the villagers themselves set out to find the killer so that an innocent person is not to to death. Loved the small town setting, the descriptions of their culture and what they needed to do to survive and protect themselves. This is a brilliant mystery for those who love combining their mysteries with some historical fact and a different country and time period. ( )

The War of the Triple Alliance, the bloodiest clash in South American history, began in 1864, and pitted Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay against Paraguay.
It ended, six years later, with the death of Paraguay’s cruel dictator, Francisco Solano Lopéz, and the dispatching into exile of Eliza Lynch, his Irish mistress and partner in crime.
And it is within this context, one of conflict and the exploits of an adventuress that reduces Evita Peron to the level of an amateur, that the second of Annamaria Alfieri’s novels plays out.
Her first, City of Silver, was set in seventeenth-century Potosi.
Now, in Invisible Country, Annamaria carries us two centuries forward, and a thousand kilometers away, to the little Paraguayan village of Santa Caterina.
As the book begins, the bloody conflict is winding down. The village’s crops and livestock have been consumed or confiscated for the war effort. People are starving. The young men have been killed or conscripted. Among the males, only the old, the infirm, or those favored by the dictator remain.
But fear of Lopéz and his consort continues to be great, and their stranglehold on the village remains strong.
When Ricardo Yotté, a close ally of the ruling couple, is murdered Lopéz pressures his local Comandante, Luis Menenez to find the culprit. And, since Menenez knows his own head will be on the block if he fails, he’s quite willing to point an accusing finger at anyone, guilty or not.
In an attempt to forestall the execution of a scapegoat, a small group of prominent villagers comes together to root out the killer.
And, ultimately, one of them does; but it turns out to be just about the last person you might suspect.
But it gets even better: Invisible Country is more than a cracking-good mystery. It’s a love story, several love stories in fact, all going on at the same time.
Love and hate, desperation and despair, terror and suspense, unexpected twists and outright surprises, Invisible Country has them all.
Do yourself a favor and read it.
And, once you have, I think you’ll agree with me.
No one is better at weaving together South American history and mystery than Annamaria Alfieri. ( )