Reviewed by George Hollinsworth
A portrait of small-time crooks and immigrant gangs in Argentina's capital... Lucas is a humble watch-seller moonlighting for a gang of armed robbers. He wants to go straight but instead becomes more entangled when he joins gang leader Gustavo in extortion work for the triads.
This is a very well researched short novel on a subject not familiar to most.
I was unaware of the extent to which the triads were entrenched on the South American Continent or that criminal gangs from neighbouring countries were operating to such a high degree in Argentina. Maybe because of that, I felt I was being told about these people rather than being shown around their world.
The bones of the story are sound, but I found it tended to read like a draft. There was so much more I wanted to know. I would love to have learned more about the characters and to have been given the opportunity to feel more of the atmosphere that would have been created around these events.
Learning more of Lucas’s relationship with his father could help round his character and understanding in more detail what brought Gustavo to his life of crime could also have helped to draw me more effectively into the story. That would also have helped to build more tension into what could have been a nail-biter of a yarn.
If this tale was ever to be filled out to its potential as a full-length novel I would certainly revisit.
This review was first published in FlaxFlower reviews, which focuses on in-depth reviews of New Zealand books of all kinds, and is reprinted here with the kind permission of Flaxflower founder and editor Bronwyn Elsmore.
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