Roberto Ampuero's The Neruda Case

Roberto Ampuero's The Neruda Case was billed as a mystery, and in fact is about the main character's first foray into private detection, but is enjoyable for reasons other than genre.

Cayetano Brulé--himself a Cuban--lives in Valparaíso, in September 1973 was contacted by Pablo Neruda to find information of a woman from his past with whom he had an affair and determine whether the child she had was his. From there the poet gives him money to make quick trips to Mexico, Bolivia, East Germany, and Cuba to find the woman's trail.

In general, I was much less interested in what he found out than the questions that arise as he investigates. One that comes up frequently is the balance between personal issues and political crises. How much should we care about ourselves when the world seems to be falling apart around us? People keep wondering that about Neruda as Brulé asks them questions.

He also meditates on detective fiction from reality. Neruda gives him Maigret novels to read as inspiration, but Brulé keeps thinking that the ordered world of France does not apply to the messiness of Latin America.

Another centers on the Chilean coup and its context in the Cold War. In many different ways Ampuero comments on the difference between the highly polarized Allende years and how so many ideologically driven people at the time lost all that by the 21st century. The descriptions of Valparaíso and Santiago in the days following up to the coup and then immediately afterward are engrossing.