Flags of Convenience CL

The author of Caro returns to Latin America for the setting of a novel revolving around two powerful characters. Rafael Alejandro Chocano is commander of the elite Blue Berets of the Santa Cruz army, directed to quell a Communist insurrection. Mark Evgenevich Chernin, code-named Captain Marco, is an officer of the Red Army, sent as technical adviser to the guerrilla rebels. Neither has more than scant regard for his government, and ultimately each is merely a soldier doing his duty. The parallels are heightened when each becomes the lover of Rocio Chacon, the widow of a rebel killed in battle. Then a coup brings to power a party opposed to government loyalists and to Communists. Marco is captured; Chocano refuses to join the junta and suffers the consequences. This is a genre novel, works on the Latin American revolution being as much a subgenre of Cold War fiction as the spy novel. Although well-written and nodding toward changed global politics, in the end it seems caught curiously out of time. (Jan.)