Return to the Same City

Rating:
Summary: wonderful fun
Review: Surreal and funny, this book is full of atmosphere and presence. Warning: some things don't make perfect sense, but yet again they do. You need to suspend judgment and accept things as they are.

Rating:
Summary: you will find no better mystery/comedy novel.
Review: This book will make you laugh and cry . . . but if you are a conservative aging white male you won't appreciate PI Taibo II's extravagant sense of humour.

Rating:
Summary: Too irritating to finish
Review: Unfortunately, this doesn't live up to the admiring blurb on its cover from the author of "Like Water for Chocolate" which calls the author's work "intelligent." The main character is a one-eyed Mexican detective with some far-fetched quirks who thinks in Marxist slogans. This would be fine, except the author has placed him in a predictable Communist morality tale, where the bad guy is an evil Cuban-American "gusano" with ties to the CIA, being pursued by an alcoholic-but-heroic left-wing gringo reporter and our hero. It turns out they are being guided and manipulated by the Castro-Cuban and Sandinista secret police (one of the few realistic touches) to do their dirty work for them. When he discovers this (somewhat after the reader) instead of giving our hero second thoughts this delights him, since he sees it as joining forces with fellow travelers in the global anti-imperialist struggle. Basically, the whole thing is about as intelligent (with about as developed a plot) as a Rius "Marxism for Beginners" comic book. It's a waste of time unless (seriously) you're interested in Marxist literature caricaturing itself.