Ulises Linares is hard up. The 29-year-old con artist, living in World War II\u2013era Mexico City, is down to his last few pesos, three years after his father and partner in crime died following a long illness. What little cash he\u2019s able to bring in comes from postal scams\u2014he corresponds with women who are willing to send him cash in the belief that he\u2019s a Prince Charming who will someday sweep them off their feet. He decides he needs a bigger score and writes to a woman in her 40s named Perla Incl\u00e1n, responding to an ad she\u2019d placed in the lonely hearts section of a magazine. Ulises travels to the town of Puerco Ahogado in Veracruz to stay at Perla\u2019s guesthouse, and senses a spark: \u201cEven though she had the faint air of a Mother Superior at a convent, when he smiled that devilish smile of his, he saw in her eyes that her interest was piqued.\u201d Unfortunately for Ulises, Perla\u2019s niece, In\u00e9s, learns about his plan, and\u2014desperate to make a life of her own away from her controlling aunt\u2014demands to be included in the con, insisting that should Ulises get his hands on the money, she\u2019ll take half of it. But it soon becomes apparent that Perla isn\u2019t the easy mark Ulises and In\u00e9s had hoped. Moreno-Garcia has ventured into historical noir before with her excellent Velvet Was the Night (2021), and with her new novel, she shows that she\u2019s still comfortable probing the darkness in people\u2019s souls: Ulises is a fascinating antihero, with a charm that belies his amorality. The three principal characters, who each get alternating chapters, are drawn beautifully, and Moreno-Garcia\u2019s slow reveal of their motivations is executed well. This is yet another rock-solid novel from a born storyteller.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ulises Linares is hard up. The 29-year-old con artist, living in World War II\u2013era Mexico City, is down to his last few pesos, three years after his father and partner in crime died following a long illness. What little cash he\u2019s able to bring in comes from postal scams\u2014he corresponds with women who are willing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6819,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6818"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}