In this leisurely, character-driven study set in 1952 from Bolivian author de Recacoechea (American Visa
), a train ride across the high Andean plain serves as the stage for a high-stakes card game, a quick sexual encounter and murder. The dramatic trip across the Antiplano from La Paz, Bolivia, to the Chilean seaport of Arica only incidentally recalls Agatha Christie’s classic Murder on the Orient Express
. The large cast mirrors the political and social scene, including an older businessman and his teenage wife, a skirt-chasing college student, a revolutionary disguised as a priest, expatriates from Ireland and Russia, and a deadly one-legged mine worker who “struck at the floor with his crutches à la Long John Silver, his favorite fictional character.” More Camus than mystery thriller, this novel delights like strong coffee savored in a cosmopolitan cafe. (Apr.)
