Reviews Fragility of Bodies
Kirkus: But the story is so gripping and Veronica is such a fascinating departure from crime fiction convention—she's 30, Jewish, brazen, and openly flawed—that the book becomes difficult to put down. Also a very good novel about journalism, it's the first installment of a trilogy. An unusual, intoxicating thriller from Argentina that casts deeper and deeper shadows.
Publishers Weekly, Starred Review: A scalding crime novel set in Buenos Aires. Olguín memorably explores the gulf between the haves and have-nots of her city. Readers will hope to see more of the complex Verónica. (Oct.)
Financial Times: ONE OF THREE BEST THRILLERS OF 2019: The late, great foreign correspondent Nicholas Tomalin once opined that a journalist needed three qualities to succeed: “ratlike cunning, a plausible manner and a little literary ability”. Verónica Rosenthal, the protagonist with a chaotic personal life of Olguín’s lively new thriller The Fragility of Bodies, has these in spades.
Olguín is a fine writer with an easy style, aided by a very readable translation by Miranda France. This is the first of a trilogy featuring Rosenthal who pursues her leads with courage and determination, as she digs into a suicide that quickly morphs into a deadly conspiracy. The series has already been turned into a television series and I’m looking forward to the next volume.
CrimeReview: This is an excellent story, well told and translated, which sustains a high level of tension throughout. The reader is well aware of the risks to Veronica and those she co-opts in her research, and these culminate in violent and gripping action. In the background we have Buenos Aires, with great disparities of wealth and prevalent corruption, but a strong sense of life being lived to the full.
NB Magazine: The Fragility of Bodies is a powerful tale of murder and corruption set in Buenos Aires; it feels troublingly plausible. It will thrill readers with a taste for dark, gritty, real-world crime fiction. This novel is distilled single malt noir, a gripping reflection on the woes and angst of Argentinian society.
SHOTS Magazine: This is how I like my noir fiction: no cops with unlikely hang-ups, no copycat serial killers, no ‘here-we-go-again’ plots. Olguín concentrates instead on villains and victims and several dollops of savage sex.
★ 2021-01-13
Investigating the rape and murder of two European women she met on vacation in northern Argentina, intrepid Buenos Aires magazine reporter Verónica Rosenthal is marked for death—twice.
Vero had plans of traveling with Frida, a Norwegian, and Petra, an Italian, before the women's bodies were found on the side of the road in Tucumán. Now she's in shock, having slept with Frida in her first romantic encounter with a woman. Determined to find the killers and overturn "the social impunity that sees these crimes as a fact of life, accepted by everyone," Vero puts her life at risk by going after them on her own—in spite of the insistence of her father, an eminent attorney, that she return to Buenos Aires. Corrupt forces on both sides of the law are unhappy with her connecting the slayings of Frida and Petra to an unsolved rape and murder from years ago. And if being stalked by their hit man weren't enough, she also is being pursued by an escaped convict who landed in prison in the series debut, The Fragility of Bodies (2019), after barely surviving her bizarre vehicular attack on him and four fellow assassins who died in the attack. Even facing death in two thrilling climaxes, Verónica won't be stopped. A socially minded avenger with a streak of Dexter in her, a sexual free spirit and a die-hard romantic, she is unlike any female protagonist in today's crime fiction. And with his easy conversational approach to the darkest noir, Olguín is a real original as well.
A quirky, un-put-down-able thriller by a veteran Argentine novelist.
