"You have to be pretty dumb to join the Civil Guard. The pay is lousy, nobody can stand you, and you're the first one they blow up with dynamite . . ." So says Civil Guard Corporal Lituma, who, with his sidekick Tomas Carreno, has been despatched to a remote Andean village to investigate the disappearance of three men. This being Peru, however, the "investigation" takes a somewhat unorthodox direction. Structured like a thriller, this modestly-sized novel packs a huge punch - without losing his grip for a second, Vargas Llosa weaves into his story a beautifully-judged helping of magic realism, some truly scarifying terrorism, a marvellously naive love story and a lot of disgruntled observation, most of it from the mouth of Lituma, a brilliantly understated creation, half-cynic, half-Good Samaritan.
A.W.