Invisible Country in Around the World in 80 Books

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Jan 08, 2012 Leighton Gage rated it it was amazing

Annamaria Alfieri’s first novel, City of Silver, was set in seventeenth-century Potosi.
Now, in Invisible Country, she carries us two centuries forward, and a thousand kilometers away, to the little Paraguayan village of Santa Caterina.
As the book begins, the War of the Triple Alliance, the bloodiest clash in South American history is in its fourth year. Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay continue to pursue their conflict of attrition against little Paraguay. Santa Caterina’s crops and livestock have Annamaria Alfieri’s first novel, City of Silver, was set in seventeenth-century Potosi.
Now, in Invisible Country, she carries us two centuries forward, and a thousand kilometers away, to the little Paraguayan village of Santa Caterina.
As the book begins, the War of the Triple Alliance, the bloodiest clash in South American history is in its fourth year. Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay continue to pursue their conflict of attrition against little Paraguay. Santa Caterina’s crops and livestock have been consumed or confiscated for the war effort. People are starving. The young men of the village have been killed or conscripted. Only the old, the infirm, or those favored by Francisco Solano Lopéz, Paraguay’s cruel dictator, remain.
The war would end almost two years in the future with the death of Lopéz and the dispatch, into exile, of Eliza Lynch, his mistress and partner in crime. But, at the time of the story, the country continues to live in fear of the ruling couple, and their stranglehold on the village is strong.
When Ricardo Yotté, a close ally of Lynch (an Irish adventuress whose real-life exploits shrink those of Evita Peron into near insignificance) is murdered, the dictator pressures his local Comandante, Luis Menenez to find the culprit.
Menenez knows his head will be on the block if he fails. A coward and a bully, he has no compunctions about accusing an innocent, even his war-hero brother-in-law, to save his own skin. So, to ensure that justice is done, a small band of Santa Caterina’s prominent citizens takes the initiative to come together and root-out the killer.
In the end, they do. But it’s just about the last person anyone would suspect.
Invisible Country excels as a mystery, but it’s a lot more than that. It’s a love story, several love stories in fact, all going on at the same time.
Love and hate, desperation and despair, terror and suspense, unexpected twists and outright surprises, Invisible Country has them all.
Even a suggestion about what might have happened to Paraguay’s national treasure, a hoard that was reputed to have traveled with Lopéz and Lynch and, to this day, has never been found.
It’s a lovely book.
And no one is better at spinning South American mysteries than Annamaria Alfieri.
Incidentally, I once blogged about Eliza Lynch on the blog I share with six other writers of “International” mysteries, Murder Is Everywhere.
Those of you who would like to see pictures of Eliza and her lover, Solando Lopéz, might like to go there:
http://bit.ly/xAIS60

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Aug 20, 2015 Wanda marked it as to-read

Shelves: mystery, historical-fiction

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Aug 13, 2023 Anna Ruth FL marked it as to-read · review of another edition

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Around the World in 80 Books