{"id":3137,"date":"2018-03-06T06:29:58","date_gmt":"2018-03-06T11:29:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/?p=3137"},"modified":"2018-03-06T06:58:59","modified_gmt":"2018-03-06T11:58:59","slug":"dont-miss-this-terrific-argentinian-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/dont-miss-this-terrific-argentinian-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Miss this Terrific Mystery from Argentina"},"content":{"rendered":"

I reviewed crime fiction at the Detroit Free Press<\/em> for about a decade and had a terrific editor who loved the genre. But she quit because she got tired of being constantly pushed to do \u201cfeatures about Stephen King.\u201d This was at a time when book coverage across the country was shrinking.<\/p>\n

Her replacement actually told me, \u201cI\u2019m not a book person.\u201d But Editor no. 2 had definite ideas about what I should be concentrating on in my column: best sellers. This was when bricks and mortar book stores were still flourishing and I felt that readers saw best sellers in newspapers ads and on full display in book store windows, in the stores themselves on walls, in end cap displays, on the best seller tables.<\/p>\n

There was no reason for me to exclude best sellers, but why not keep my main focus on great books readers might miss: books by new or under-appreciated authors; books from independent presses; books that had been translated into English. That last category was especially important to me because with Americans tend to avoid books in translation.<\/p>\n

If I did review a translated book, I only picked that novel if the translation felt smooth and natural (beyond the story being good, of course). Claudia Pi\u00f1eiro is Argentina\u2019s best-selling crime writer, someone I\u2019ve just discovered, and her book A Crack in the Wall<\/em> is all of that and more, thanks to its highly unusual structure and focus.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Pablo Sim\u00f3 works in a boutique Buenos Aires architectural firm. He\u2019s a bit of a dreamer and something of a weirdo. He obsessively designs a building he doesn\u2019t seem destined to ever build, and he takes a circuitous subway route home instead of a direct bus for reasons that take some time to become clear. What also evolves is the nature of the crime the book is built around.<\/p>\n

In Chapter One we discover that he and his colleagues are somehow involved in a murder and its cover-up, but the how and why emerge slowly, in the context of his messy family life and all the ways in which he\u2019s really living a life of quiet desperation. When excitement and sex enter the story it\u2019s both a surprise,and the psychological depths the author explores drive the story forward in exciting, gripping ways. Diving deep into verities of love and marriage, the author lays bare the city\u2019s convoluted building practices and takes us on a fascinating virtual tour of the city\u2019s architecture, especially some of its famous Art Nouveau structures.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been reading and reviewing mysteries for years, but don\u2019t remember anything quite like A Crack in the Wall<\/em>. It\u2019s one of those books you finish with a \u201cWow!\u201d or maybe even \u201cDamn!\u201d<\/p>\n

Lev Raphael is the author of eight mysteries<\/a> set in Michigan along with a wide range of books in genres from memoir to vampire fiction.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I reviewed crime fiction at the Detroit Free Press for about a decade and had a terrific editor who loved the genre. But she quit because she got tired of being constantly pushed to do \u201cfeatures about Stephen King.\u201d This was at a time when book coverage across the country was shrinking. Her replacement actually … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[877],"tags":[1108,1112,1109,869,875,148,1111,1110,219,197,510,1107],"class_list":["post-3137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","tag-a-crack-in-the-wall","tag-architecture","tag-argentina","tag-art-nouveau","tag-book-review","tag-book-reviewing","tag-buenos-aires","tag-claudia-pineiro","tag-crime-fiction","tag-mysteries","tag-reviewing","tag-tuesdaybookblog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3137"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3148,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3137\/revisions\/3148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}