Some Clouds: A Hector Belascoaran Shayne Detective Novel: Amazon.ca: Paco Ignacio Taibo II: Books

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Book Description

Publication Date: Dec 15 2002 | Series: Hector Belascoaran Shayne Detective Novels

Mexico City independent detective Hector Belascoaran Shayne is summoned back home from vacation by his sister, whose childhood friend Anita has been raped and nearly killed by unknown assailants. Hector soon discovers that Anita, recently married into the wealthy Costa family, has just seen her husband and his two brothers systematically murdered. Now, Anita stands in line to receive a legacy of some 200 million pesos if she can stay alive long enough to receive it.

During his investigation, Hector trades stories with novelist Paco Ignacio (who bears no little resemblance to Taibo), who is writing a crime novel based upon the recent murder of fourteen narcotraficantes and has traced the crime directly back to Judicial Police Commander Saavedra.

Taibo weaves these two seemingly disparate threads together into a novel that stretches the boundaries of the crime genre and poses the question: how does a detective operate in a society in which the social and political institutions designed to protect the people are hopelessly corrupt?

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Product Details

Paperback: 250 pages
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press; 1 edition (Dec 15 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 159058032X
ISBN-13: 978-1590580325
Product Dimensions: 1 x 14 x 21 cm
Shipping Weight: 227 g

Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,184,673 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

In a spare narrative voice that packs a wallop, Taibo ( The Shadow of the Shadow ) describes a Mexico City teeming with corruption, passion and hazards for his one-eyed, half-Irish, half-Basque, Coca-Cola-swilling PI, Hector Belascoaran Shayne. Taibo's detective owes a great deal to the Dashiell Hammett prototype: while he turns a jaded eye on the affairs of men (and women), he also demonstrates loyalty and courage beyond the call of duty in his work and personal relationships. Here he rescues his sister's childhood amiga Anita after she is brutally attacked and raped upon inheriting blood money from her murdered husband. Sound complicated? The threads of corruption in this novel are tied in double and triple knots, but clean prose carries the reader through a neat process of untying them, even if credibility is strained by Anita's readiness to become sexually involved with the hero before she has so much as removed the bandages from her injuries. In an interesting twist, characteristic of his playful literary sensibility, Taibo portrays Shayne's encounter with a writer of dubious success who bears the author's own given names, Paco Ignacio. Taibo takes the gumshoe into new regions of the map and of the imagination.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In An Easy Thing (Viking, 1990), a diffuse detective novel mixing history, mystery, and literature, Spanish-Mexican writer Taibo introduced detective Hector Belascoaran Shayne, a tough-guy Mexican detective fond of soda pop. In Some Clouds , the detective reappears to take on a corrupt cop. When an old man named Costa dies of a heart attack, a large fortune in his name is discovered in various parts of Mexico. Two of his sons are subsequently killed and a third driven mad. When the widow of one of the brothers is beaten, raped, and threatened if she does not give up the inheritance, Belascoaran Shayne investigates, getting clues from an old college chum-become-mob-boss and a novelist who writes books very much like those of Taibo himself. Taibo focuses the plot of this slim volume more than in his earlier book, but a pervasive, grisly fatalism; the powerful depiction of Mexico City's corruption; and Belascoaran Shayne himself are what make the book worth reading.
- Harold Augen braum, Mercantile Lib., New York
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent mystery -- & Feliz Cumpleaños to Taibo II ! Jan 11 2003

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

So on this serendipitous day for me and natal day for the author, and having just finished this excellent, many-layered mystery, I wanted to highly recommend it -- and all the wild and edifying series that features Basque-Irish-absurdist detective Hector Belascoarán Shayne, presenting the city of Mexico in such an authentic and ironic light. While the series hardly needs to be read in any sort of order, I believe the chronology for titles is: (Días de Combate), An Easy Thing, Some Clouds, No Happy Ending, Return to the Same City, (Amorosas Frantasmas), Frontera Dreams, (Desvanecidos Difuntos), (Adiós, Madrid)-- with those yet-to-appear-in-English in parentheses.

and, Feliz Cumpleaños to Paco Ignacio Taibo II !

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3.0 out of 5 stars DIFFERENT STYLE, DIFFERENT FORCE Jan 15 2000

By "jas-webb"

Format:Hardcover

OF ALL PACO IGNACIO TAIBO'S BOOKS THIS IS HIS TIGHTEST. I'VE READ TWO OTHERS AND A PART OF A FOURTH THINKING ONE MAY BE BETTER THAN THIS, BUT IF YOU LIKE AN AUTHOR IT'S A PERSONAL DECISION. I WAS ATTRACTED BY A MYSTERY AUTHOR FROM ANOTHER CULTURE WRITING ABOUT A PRIVATE EYE IN THAT CULTURE AND IN THAT RESPECT SOME CLOUDS WAS A SUCCESS. THE DIFFERENT CHARACTERS, THE DIFFERENT SETTING. SATURDAY AFTERNOON READING.

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com ^(beta)

Amazon.com: 4.0 out of 5 stars 2 reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent mystery -- & Feliz Cumpleaños to Taibo II ! Jan 11 2003

By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Sitting in Mexico on an unseasonably cloudy day, I picked up my newly-purchased copy of Some Clouds, feeling a certain amount of order in the cosmos, along with happy anticipation. Then I discovered that today (as I'm writing this) is Paco Ignacio Taibo II's birthday. Then I discovered that Some Clouds, the third in his Hector Belascoarán Shayne detective series, seemed to have an undeservedly low number of Amazon-stars. (The Spanish version has -- at the moment -- one more star than the English, which is plain strange. Not only are both versions excellent reading, but William I. Neuman, who translated this volume into English, is really brilliant. I think that Spanish-to-English translators of contemporary Mexican literature could probably use Algunas Nubes/Some Clouds as a sort of how-to text.)

So on this serendipitous day for me and natal day for the author, and having just finished this excellent, many-layered mystery, I wanted to highly recommend it -- and all the wild and edifying series that features Basque-Irish-absurdist detective Hector Belascoarán Shayne, presenting the city of Mexico in such an authentic and ironic light. While the series hardly needs to be read in any sort of order, I believe the chronology for titles is: (Días de Combate), An Easy Thing, Some Clouds, No Happy Ending, Return to the Same City, (Amorosas Fantasmas), Frontera Dreams, (Desvanecidos Difuntos), (Adiós, Madrid)-- with those yet-to-appear-in-English in parentheses.

and, Feliz Cumpleaños to Paco Ignacio Taibo II !

2 of 6 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars DIFFERENT STYLE, DIFFERENT FORCE Jan 15 2000

By "jas-webb" - Published on Amazon.com

Format:Hardcover

› Go to Amazon.com to see both reviews 4.0 out of 5 stars

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Some Clouds: A Hector Belascoaran Shayne Detective Novel [Paperback]