The Secret in their Eyes, by Eduardo Sacheri, HarperCollins, $29.95
“The book behind the Oscar-winning best foreign film”, says the stamp on the cover. Well, in front of the film actually, but that gold statue clearly woke up the publishers and six years on this terrific crime thriller-cum-love story appears in English for the first time.
On the surface, it’s about a former investigator in the courts of Buenos Aries, haunted by a long-ago case of a beautiful young woman’s rape and murder.
He risked his career — and life — to find the killer and is now writing a book telling the true story.
This all happened in Argentina, during the 1970s, when the courts operated by whim of the military junta.
The political machinations, and the attempts to block the investigation, provide a rich background to the novel’s broader themes of justice and revenge, plus our detective hero’s attempts to rekindle an unrequited love. It’s a great mixture, the writing strong and simple; I found it gripping.
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