The Neruda case - Roberto Ampuero

In 1970's Chile Pablo Neruda,
the Nobel-prize winning poet, is close to death, and he senses the end of an
era in Chilean politics but there is one final secret he must resolve. He
recruits Cayetano Brul, a young Cuban rogue, as his "own private Maigret"
and lends Brul the novels of Simenon as a crash course in the role of
private detective. Brul must travel across the world, through Neruda's past
and the political faiths he has espoused, retracing the poet's life from
Fidel Castro's Cuba to Berlin, Mexico City to Bolivia. Brul desperately
tries to fulfil Neruda's final request amid the brutal beginning of
Pinochet's dictatorship while all the poet once believed in is swept away.
Evocative and romantic, The Neruda Case spans lies and truth, travelling
between uneasy peace and political coup, from life to death. Brul, a
daydreamer and reluctant detective, is lost among Latin America's
uncertainties, venality and corruption while his first case introduces one of
the great characters of international crime fiction. Among the pleasures of
The Neruda Case is its provocative fictional portrait of Pablo Neruda, as the
poet re-evaluates his life and begins to question abandoning those he loved
for his poetry. This is the first English language translation of Roberto
Ampuero's atmospheric Brul detective novels and brings South American noir
to a new audience.