Holy City

Description

Buenos Aires, Argentina. A passenger liner runs aground on the muddy banks of the nearby Rio de la Plata. The passengers are reduced to sleeping in the corridors of hotels and fall easy prey to the city's criminal class, who are always willing to take a wealthy tourist hostage. The first to go missing are a Colombian drug baron and his girlfriend, apprehended by Federal Police who may or may not be all they claim to be. But criminal celebrities of this calibre are a valuable commodity, and their abductor soon finds that the couple has been lifted from under his nose. Into the confusion steps Walter Carroza, a weary but honest cop. With his sidekick and confidante, Veronica Berutti, a policeman's widow and crusading lawyer, he embarks on an investigation that will lead him from the shanty markets of Buenos Aires' Bolivian quarter through layer upon layer of corruption towards the 'Holy Land', a theme park based on ancient Palestine, where a killer with a grisly taste for memorabilia lurks.

Awards

Winner of Premio Hammett (Spanish Hammett Prize) 2010.

Author description

Guillermo Orsi works in Buenos Aires as a journalist. His novel Suenos de Perro won the Semana Negra Umbriel Award in 2004, and Holy City was the winner of the Hammett Prize 2010. Nick Caistor's translations include The Buenos Aires Quintet by Manuel Vazquez Montalban and the works of Juan Marse and Alan Pauls.