From Amazon.com
"How do we coexist without rotting in sadness?" asks private detective Hector Belascoaran Shayne of his beleaguered and beloved Mexico. Not your typical PI, Shayne is prone to bouts of existential crisis. But that doesn't stop him from trying to solve the murder of a Cuban rhumba dancer's wife. Nor does it protect him from a fusillade of bullets fired by a Mariachi band, or from an entanglement with the C.I.A. while in Mexico investigating the woman's death. Paco Ignacio Taibo killed off Shayne in
No Happy Ending,but he has resurrected the one-eyed sleuth for
Return to the Same City. How? Who knows? A deep thinker and a darkly humorous character, Shayne is the perfect companion for a literary visit to the spiritual side of Mexico.
From Publishers Weekly
Taibo's novels about Mexico City detective Hector Belascoaran Shayne (No Happy Ending) are an addicting import. At first, their hard-boiled surrealistic flights?as if Garcia Marquez had been taking writing lessons from Dashiell Hammett?can strike a reader as excessive and glib, but soon they become part of a beguiling worldview in which everything, including crime and love, are elements in a cosmic joke. So you find here that Hector, left a bullet-riddled corpse in the rain in No Happy Ending, has been miraculously resurrected for another case. It involves a shadowy figure with several names, who seems to have caused the suicide of someone's sister and is being pursued by an alcoholic American reporter with sources in the CIA. Is the many-aliased Luke Estrella also involved in a guns-for-drugs Contra operation? Hector doesn't really care, but sets off in dogged pursuit anyway, to Acapulco, then Tijuana, finally bringing matters to a head in a hilarious climax involving several hired mariachi bands, armed to the teeth, in an empty warehouse. Don't forget the two ducks that live under Hector's bed, and how down he gets when he runs out of Coke. As noted, these tales are an easily acquired taste.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
