The Name of a Bullfighter - Hardcover

Sepulveda, Luis; Ruta, Suzanne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0151001936 ISBN 13: 9780151001934

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1996

Synopsis

Written by the author--a Chilean ex-patriate--of The Old Man Who Read Love Stories, a novel of intrigue follows a race between a onetime guerilla and a former spy to recover a stolen treasure.

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An abrupt change of pace from the Chilean author of The Old Man Who Read Love Stories (not reviewed), this is a swiftly paced suspense thriller that adapts the rhetoric of Raymond Chandler to the genre of international intrigue. During WW II, a pair of German policemen steal and hide a cache of precious medieval coins (known as ``the collection of the Wandering Crescent''). More than half a century later, two parallel searches for this treasure are set in motion--by the crippled thief whose partner absconded to South America with the coins soon after the war ended, and by a furtive remnant of the German Democratic Republic's intelligence-gathering bureau. The latter organization sends Frank Galinsky, a burnt-out former intelligence officer, to do its bidding. His rival--and the novel's only fully-developed character--is Juan Belmonte, a weary ex-Sandinista guerrilla living in exile in Hamburg, who bears the same name as a famous bullfighter--and also the annoying opprobrium of being continually mistaken for a Turk. Belmonte is a cynical survivor, with submerged personal reasons both pushing him from and drawing him toward his homeland, and the possessor of a sardonic noir-ish mode of expression that's straight out of 1930s Warner Brothers melodramas (for example, this thumbnail observation of a peripheral character: ``He was short and tubby, and I've seen clams with longer necks''). The story marches along smartly and breezily, enlivened by Belmonte's bilious charm. But its other characters are dull dogs by comparison, and its resolution--complete with a melodramatic climactic confrontation and a last-second rescue--is strictly formula stuff. Capably written, intermittently entertaining, and undoubtedly destined for the screen. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Chilean Sepulveda borrows from genre fiction to create a novel as thoughtful as it is suspenseful. During World War II, a couple of German soldiers steal a collection of priceless gold coins. One escapes to Chile and buries the loot, the other gets caught, survives the war, and lives out his life in East Germany. Jump 50 years ahead, the Berlin wall has come down, and, through a bit of complicated plotting, the coins are hot again. Racing after the treasure are Juan Belmonte, a political exile from Chile living in Hamburg who's been blackmailed into the job, and Frank Galinsky, ex-Stasi agent in need of a new career. One of the most engaging subplots is Juan's life before exile and the story of his lover, broken down by torture from the Chilean military. At times, the genre-bending doesn't work, and one wishes the book was resolutely a mystery or had the depth of more literary fiction. But the book succeeds well in portraying a world torn apart by totalitarianism, whether Nazi, Chilean, or East German. Deftly translated into neo-noir American prose. Brian Kenney

Juan Belmonte, an unemployed Marxist guerrilla named for a famous bullfighter, is approached by an insurance agent to retrieve a cache of medieval gold coins, looted from the German treasury during World War II and stashed somewhere in Chile. The novel moves quickly from the sleaze of Hamburg and post-wall Berlin to the empty, anonymous spaces of the Chilean pampas and Tierra del Fuego. Sepulveda (The Old Man Who Read Love Stories, Harcourt, 1993) examines the sometimes sordid and violent lives and psyches of the various characters. The novel is intricately crafted and the action superbly suspenseful as Juan is chased halfway around the world by an unemployed former East German intelligence agent. Recommended for most collections.?Mary Margaret Benson, Linfield Coll. Lib., Mcminnville, Ore.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0151001936
• ISBN 13: 9780151001934
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 211