![]() ![]() Throw in the largest consumer market in the world, and you have a system that uses Big Money as a cover for murder and savagery. Add to that thousands of migrants and a booming industrial sector. Behind the curtain lurk the drug cartels and the drug war. One thing is clear: a breakdown in law and order fuels the killings. Most of the real cases he used as sources, a string of rapes and murders in the late 90s, remain unsolved. ![]() Bolaño keeps the murder mystery intact, and with good reason. It has everything you want in a crime novel-hardboiled detectives, a seedy underworld, rampant corruption-minus the big reveal. But for all the heavy lifting, it still reads like a page-turner. The size and scope of it force you to think globally. The second time around, I think I understood why 2666 is a Big Book That Matters. As the web of evidence spreads, the search for the serial killer gets tangled in the search for a reclusive novelist whose bio bears a curious resemblance to the author B. Everything else-and there’s a lot-unspools backward and forward in time, leaving a trail of cryptic clues across two continents. At the center is a series of unsolved murders around Santa Teresa, a mythic city on the Mexican border, much like Ciudad Juárez. Roberto Bolaño’s five-part beast of a novel calls for some amateur detective work. Even as I was reading 2666 the first time, I knew I would need to read it again. ![]()
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