"Daniel Chavarr a has long been recognized as one of Latin America's finest writers. Now he again proves why with Adios Muchachos, a comic mystery peopled by a delightfully mad band of miscreants, all of them led by a woman you will not soon forget--Alicia, the loveliest bicycle whore in all Havana." --Edgar Award-winning author William Heffernan
"Celebrated in Latin America for his noir detective fiction, Uruguayan author Chavarr a makes his English-language debut with this fast-paced novel, set in Cuba. Featuring Alicia, a bicycle-riding prostitute, and Victor, a Canadian financier with a shady past and a few current secrets, Adios Muchachos spins the tale of a caper gone awry, where no one is particularly bad and everyone is on the take. Castro's Havana has not appeared this sunny in many years, nor have its crooks been this good-natured. There is an accidentally dead Dutch millionaire, a man with a nose so large that he wears a mask to hide it when he makes love, a recipe for smoked eels in mango sauce, and a defective Chinese bicycle. Mixed together, these ingredients make a zesty Cuban paella of a novel that's impossible to put down. This is a great read, recommended for public libraries." --Library Journal
The first suspense novel in English-translation by internationally acclaimed Uruguayan mystery writer Daniel Chavarr a, Adios Muchachos is a dark, erotic, brutally funny romp through the sexual underworld and black-market boardrooms of post-Cold War Cuba. Seen through Chavarr a's compassionate but uncompromising eyes, present-day Havana is a crossroads for petty hustlers looking for an easy mark, two-time losers looking for a fresh start, and high-rolling international speculators looking to take advantage of them all.
The novel describes the ill-fated alliance between Alicia, a stunningly beautiful prostitute who openly displays her voluptuous wares by bicycle on the city streets, and Victor King, a desperately ambitious Canadian businessman with an enormous appetite for kinky sex and buried treasure--and a striking resemblance to movie star Mel Gibson.
Following an early erotic entanglement of their own, Victor hires Alicia to lure a series of handsome lovers into the bedroom of his estate for the voyeuristic gratification of his mysterious wife, Elizabeth, who watches the action with her husband through a two-way mirror. After a sultry drunken dance results in the accidental death of Victor's wealthy Dutch business partner, Rieks Groote, Victor sees his ambitions for wealth suddenly go up in smoke and Alicia faces the end to her dreams of escaping her dreary, dead-end life on the island.
Hustlers all the way, the two quickly decide to turn disaster into opportunity, hiding the body in a freezer and hatching an elaborate kidnapping scheme that will allow them to steal millions of dollars from the Groote family and start a new life together off the island. Through a series of startling plot twists and slapstick misadventures, Victor and Alicia find themselves unwittingly manipulated and ultimately outmaneuvered by a sympathetic fellow hustler. In the end, everything revolves around the secret ingredient to an old family recipe and a long-overdue nose job--as only one of the novel's characters is able to make off with the loot and bid "adios" to Cuba and the past.
Industry Reviews
Uruguayan novelist and classics professor Chavarria turns from his scholarly studies of the origins of prostitution to a contemporary lab in his translation-into-English debut, the cat-and-mouse tale of a bicycle whore in post-Soviet Havana. If there's one thing Alicia wants, it's not to be poor. So when Gorbachev turns a cold shoulder on his North American comrades, putting an end to her studies at the university, she makes a careful assessment of her assets-golden-blond hair, perky breasts, irresistible behind-then puts them on careful display on a secondhand bike. Her lovingly detailed technique is so foolproof that soon the house that she shares with her mother, Margarita, is filled to bursting with gifts from her new friends (the two ladies are too proud and independent to accept cash). Alicia, in fact, never takes money with her and never eats anywhere but home-until she meets Victor King, trade representative for a firm of Dutch treasure hunters who talks like Pancho Villa and looks like Mel Gibson. He's so handsome that Alicia agrees to have dinner at his elegantly furnished home, where she and he have every kind of sex Chavarria hasn't already catalogued. Alicia thinks she's got it made; she'll become mistress to this gorgeous hunk and never have to pedal the streets of Havana again-except that King wants her not for himself but for his wife, Elizabeth, who can only become aroused when she watches others. So Alicia agrees to put on well-paid shows for Victor and Elizabeth, copulating enthusiastically with a variety of men and the occasional knickknack-until King ups the ante once again, involving her in a kidnap plot that will either make her rich or ruin her. A one-of-a-kind sport that's too torrid to satisfy as a thriller and too cockamamie to be erotic. (Kirkus Reviews)
