No One Weeps for Me Now

Ramirez again combines a taut thriller plot with a searing portrayal of Nicaragua and elements of magical realism with the brilliant second volume of his Managua Trilogy (after The Sky Weeps for Me). Former Sandinista guerrilla Dolores Morales’s career as a police inspector ended after his successful pursuit of drug kingpins angered powerful government officials. Now a private investigator, he’s summoned by wealthy banker Miguel Soto Colmenares, whose stepdaughter Marcela, a recent college graduate, has disappeared while shopping with some friends. Soto hires Morales to find Marcela, but limits his brief to just locating her, and not figuring out what happened and why. As Morales makes the most out of the scant leads, aided by an eccentric group of allies including the ghost of his deceased partner, Lord Dixon, he finds evidence of a cover-up that once again finds him stepping on some influential toes. Ramirez vividly depicts the mean streets and peppers the perfectly hardboiled crime saga with wonderfully strange details, such as a man “carrying an Uzi as if cradling a doll.” Readers will eagerly await the conclusion. (Nov.)