This splendid South American novel has been overlooked by most crime and mystery reviewers and deserves to be brought to the attention of a larger public. Unashamedly literary and structured in unconventional ways and with an added dash of third world politics reminding the reader that atrocities and the ‘disappeared’ also occurred in Colombia and not just in Chile and Argentina. A young Colombian philosophy student has been arrested in Bangkok and faces the death penalty. His consul in New Dehli, himself a writer, is drawn into the case and unveils the back story that led to the event, and following the trail of the plane tickets the student had used, travels to Tokyo where the missing sister at the root of the whole quest was once working as an escort. Not only a thriller, but also a most delicate love story, an insight into politics and diplomacy and a meta novel about the art of disappearing, a most intriguing and rewarding read.
