Return to the Same City [Hardcover]

Paco Ignacio Taibo II (Author), Laura Dail (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1996

The last Hector Belascoaran Shayne mystery from Paco Ignacio Taibo II ended with the one-eyed detective lying in the oily rain of Mexico City, his body perforated with bullets. Now the author of this hugely popular, highly political, endlessly inventive series of novels proves that no miracle is beyond his reach. Hector Belascoaran Shayne rises from the dead. He's a gun-carrying argonaut of Mexico City, city of strikes and pollution, "cemetery of dreams". He doesn't want to be alive, but he is, and when a woman tells him a sob story about her sister's death at the hands of a handsome rumba dancer in white patent leather shoes named Luke Estrella, Hector agrees to do something about him. In a Mexico City hotel the detective meets a battered, alcoholic gringo who's after the same man. On Acapulco Bay, nearly blinded by bikinied beauties, the detective shadows Estrella, who once owned porn shops in Cuba, cut off the hands of Che Guevara, and is now meeting with CIA operatives and a trafficker of stolen archeological treasures. Before Hector can decide whether he is pursuing Estrella or Estrella is pursuing him, he finds himself on a flight to Tijuana, for a confrontation with a killer.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"How do we coexist without rotting in sadness?" asks private detective Hector Belascoaran Shayne of his beleaguered and beloved Mexico. Not your typical PI, Shayne is prone to bouts of existential crisis. But that doesn't stop him from trying to solve the murder of a Cuban rhumba dancer's wife. Nor does it protect him from a fusillade of bullets fired by a Mariachi band, or from an entanglement with the C.I.A. while in Mexico investigating the woman's death. Paco Ignacio Taibo killed off Shayne in No Happy Ending,but he has resurrected the one-eyed sleuth for Return to the Same City. How? Who knows? A deep thinker and a darkly humorous character, Shayne is the perfect companion for a literary visit to the spiritual side of Mexico.

From Publishers Weekly

Taibo's novels about Mexico City detective Hector Belascoaran Shayne (No Happy Ending) are an addicting import. At first, their hard-boiled surrealistic flights?as if Garcia Marquez had been taking writing lessons from Dashiell Hammett?can strike a reader as excessive and glib, but soon they become part of a beguiling worldview in which everything, including crime and love, are elements in a cosmic joke. So you find here that Hector, left a bullet-riddled corpse in the rain in No Happy Ending, has been miraculously resurrected for another case. It involves a shadowy figure with several names, who seems to have caused the suicide of someone's sister and is being pursued by an alcoholic American reporter with sources in the CIA. Is the many-aliased Luke Estrella also involved in a guns-for-drugs Contra operation? Hector doesn't really care, but sets off in dogged pursuit anyway, to Acapulco, then Tijuana, finally bringing matters to a head in a hilarious climax involving several hired mariachi bands, armed to the teeth, in an empty warehouse. Don't forget the two ducks that live under Hector's bed, and how down he gets when he runs out of Coke. As noted, these tales are an easily acquired taste.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 178 pages
• Publisher: Mysterious Press (September 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892965908
• ISBN-13: 978-0892965908
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,523,672 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If Hamlet were a post-modern Mexican private eye, April 29, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Return to the Same City (Hardcover)

Paco Ignacio Taibo's existence-beleaguered private eye continues to roam the streets of Mexico City in search of good sense and moral behavior even after his apparent death. The P.I.'s name, Shayne, plays off the traditional P.I. -- represented by Brett Halliday's character Mike Shayne -- and the lone-outsider-as-hero -- represented by Jack Schaeffer's/Alan Ladd's cowboy Shane. With none of the boisterous control of the former and never quite attaining the quiet dignity of the latter, Taibo's Shayne feels the weight of his Mexico City -- one part Chaos Theory, one part Entropy, one part gritty-greedy-urban-monster -- as it bears down on its inhabitants, who look for fun and hope in every unlikely place. Shayne wants things to be simple and to make sense, but they rarely do in his world, no matter how hard he tries to make it so. World weary, witty, and marvelously funny, I'm glad Shayne came back from the dead. I hope we see more of his adventures in translation.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars you will find no better mystery/comedy novel., February 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Return to the Same City (Mass Market Paperback)

This book will make you laugh and cry . . . but if you are a conservative aging white male you won't appreciate PI Taibo II's extravagant sense of humour.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars wonderful fun, September 15, 2002

By 

Stephan Arndt (Iowa City, IA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Return to the Same City (Mass Market Paperback)

Surreal and funny, this book is full of atmosphere and presence. Warning: some things don't make perfect sense, but yet again they do. You need to suspend judgment and accept things as they are.