Death Going Down

Known as the Argentinian Agatha Christie, Bosco (1917–2006) published her first crime novel in 1954. This competent if unexceptional puzzler is now available in English for the first time. Early one morning, an inebriated Pancho Soler returns home to his upscale apartment building in Buenos Aires. Inside the elevator is a pale young woman in a fur coat slumped against a back panel. Soler gets a rude shock when he touches the woman’s cold skin. She’s later identified as Frida Eidinger, who recently moved to Argentina from Germany with her new husband, Gustavo; she died of cyanide poisoning, an apparent suicide. While not a resident, Eidinger had a key to the building. Supt. Insp. Santiago Ericourt, a somewhat generic sleuth, investigates what becomes a murder case. Ericourt must sort out the victim’s complex relationships with Gustavo and the building’s residents, as well as the interrelationships among the latter. In the end, Ericourt gathers all the suspects for a reconstruction of the crime in a denouement that falls short of Christie’s standard. (Mar.)