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Tequila Blue
“Both a scathing and picaresque comedy, a biting and spicy concoction. Just like tequila.”—Le Monde It’s not easy being a cop in Mexico City. Meet Carlito, a police detective with a complicated life. A wife, a mistress, children by both. He resorts to money laundering and arms dealing to finance his police activity. The money for justice must be found somewhere. The corpse in the hotel room is that of a gringo with a weakness for blue movies. Carlito’s maverick investigation leads him into a labyrinth of gang wars and corrupt politicians. Rolo Diez , born in Argentina, was imprisoned for two years during the military dictatorship. He now lives in Mexico City, where he works as a novelist and screenwriter.
186 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
25 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
April 10, 2018
This searing tale of a deeply flawed man trying to do some good within a corrupt system clocks in at less than 200 pages, but packs a huge wallop. Small but powerful. A word of warning: it’s what I’d call a ‘marmite book’, in that it’ll divide readers into love or hate camps.
One thing's for sure, it’s certainly not boring or run-of-the-mill.
Carlito Hernandez is a complicated man with a complicated life. He’s an underpaid detective in Mexico City, battling criminals while trying to earn enough to allow him to do his job, and also support the kids he has with both his wife and mistress. The consequences of his appetites.
Like many colleagues, Carlito has both personal and professional ‘side action’ going on: protection rackets and arms dealing helps pay his bills. It's just the way things are done in Mexico.
Carlito’s an interesting character: both deeply loving and rather selfish. He fights crime, and commits it. He has some sort of sense of honor, while doing dishonourable things to find justice – or pleasure.
When the body of a ‘gringo’ is discovered in a hotel room, it creates lots of new headaches for Carlito. His bosses want the case wrapped up in a certain way. But his maverick pursuit of the murderer pulls him into a maze of pornography, gang wars, and corruption among the country’s elite.
This is not an ordinary crime novel, or one that fits within much of the genre produced by US and UK writers. It is packed with machismo and misogyny along with corruption and crime. There's a sweaty seamy-ness to it. A thick atmosphere of grit and grime, dust and danger.
It hovers between energetic and over-the-top. But for me, for me, TEQUILA BLUE clicked.
I thought it was brilliant, scathing and satirical – like author Diez (an Argentinean native imprisoned decades ago by its military junta, who now lives in Mexico City) had a knowing wink and sly grin on his face as he was writing. Others may roll their eyes at over-the-top machismo, or struggle with the attitudes of some characters. But regardless of where you stand on that front, Diez delivers electric prose, with a biting social conscience beneath a grimy veneer of sex, drugs, and violence.
Marmite, but magnificent.
This is an extended version of a review I wrote for the first edition of Mawake Crime Review, a new project in Crimespree magazine focused on great crime fiction from Africa, Asia, Australasia and Latin America: http://crimespreemag.com/mawake-crime...
One thing's for sure, it’s certainly not boring or run-of-the-mill.
Carlito Hernandez is a complicated man with a complicated life. He’s an underpaid detective in Mexico City, battling criminals while trying to earn enough to allow him to do his job, and also support the kids he has with both his wife and mistress. The consequences of his appetites.
Like many colleagues, Carlito has both personal and professional ‘side action’ going on: protection rackets and arms dealing helps pay his bills. It's just the way things are done in Mexico.
Carlito’s an interesting character: both deeply loving and rather selfish. He fights crime, and commits it. He has some sort of sense of honor, while doing dishonourable things to find justice – or pleasure.
When the body of a ‘gringo’ is discovered in a hotel room, it creates lots of new headaches for Carlito. His bosses want the case wrapped up in a certain way. But his maverick pursuit of the murderer pulls him into a maze of pornography, gang wars, and corruption among the country’s elite.
This is not an ordinary crime novel, or one that fits within much of the genre produced by US and UK writers. It is packed with machismo and misogyny along with corruption and crime. There's a sweaty seamy-ness to it. A thick atmosphere of grit and grime, dust and danger.
It hovers between energetic and over-the-top. But for me, for me, TEQUILA BLUE clicked.
I thought it was brilliant, scathing and satirical – like author Diez (an Argentinean native imprisoned decades ago by its military junta, who now lives in Mexico City) had a knowing wink and sly grin on his face as he was writing. Others may roll their eyes at over-the-top machismo, or struggle with the attitudes of some characters. But regardless of where you stand on that front, Diez delivers electric prose, with a biting social conscience beneath a grimy veneer of sex, drugs, and violence.
Marmite, but magnificent.
This is an extended version of a review I wrote for the first edition of Mawake Crime Review, a new project in Crimespree magazine focused on great crime fiction from Africa, Asia, Australasia and Latin America: http://crimespreemag.com/mawake-crime...
February 17, 2019
A truly savage satire of corruption in Mexican society but most especially among the Mexican police, Tequila Blue is strong meat that's most definitely not for everyone.
Carlos Hernandez is a Mexican cop and (according to the novel) therefore a crook -- he has to be in order to survive, because his paycheck is minuscule and arrives only intermittently. Besides, he has expensive habits: a wife and a mistress, to both of whom he's extensively unfaithful with colleagues and whores (those hourly hotel bills do add up, you know), a fondness for hooch, and more. So he trades in illegal guns, steals valuables from the dead, and turns a blind eye to crimes if the price is right.
The trouble is, he's one of the better, more principled cops. He's a paragon of virtue alongside his boss . . .
In addition to its satirical thrust, Tequila Blue offers us a mystery. An American who does business in Mexico is found dead in a cheap hotel, the only clue being that he seems to have brought a transvestite hooker there with him. Soon, though, it's revealed the gringo had a career in pornography and blackmail -- and not just any pornography but snuff movies. The mystery is actually a pretty good one, although Carlos's solution of it is not for the purist, relying little on logic and a great deal on imaginative guesswork.
And, even though he works out what went on, this is not the resolution of the case that can be presented in public -- aside from anything else, the American embassy doesn't want to see the truth about the victim's profession emerge for fear of besmirching his home country's public image. So Carlos has to invent another solution, one that's more palatable to all concerned. Of course, that involves letting a serial burglar and rapist essentially walk free and the perpetrators of the worst crime in the novel go unpunished -- a crime beside which mere murder pales. But those are small prices to pay for maintaining the status quo.
It's not because of the viciousness of its satire or the unlikeability of its almost wholly amoral protagonist that I was a tad underimpressed by Tequila Blue. The problem with the book for me is that the plot seems to lose its way for quite a while in the middle. Part of this dreary stretch is a longish sequence that appears to make little sense (although it does help Carlos solve the murder); the Great Revelation of why it didn't make much sense had me spitting and cursing at the deception's cheesiness.
So, while I admired the novel's ambition, I was less convinced by some of the execution. On the other hand, it's a pretty short book, so there's no huge investment of time involved if you think it might be worth a try.
Carlos Hernandez is a Mexican cop and (according to the novel) therefore a crook -- he has to be in order to survive, because his paycheck is minuscule and arrives only intermittently. Besides, he has expensive habits: a wife and a mistress, to both of whom he's extensively unfaithful with colleagues and whores (those hourly hotel bills do add up, you know), a fondness for hooch, and more. So he trades in illegal guns, steals valuables from the dead, and turns a blind eye to crimes if the price is right.
The trouble is, he's one of the better, more principled cops. He's a paragon of virtue alongside his boss . . .
In addition to its satirical thrust, Tequila Blue offers us a mystery. An American who does business in Mexico is found dead in a cheap hotel, the only clue being that he seems to have brought a transvestite hooker there with him. Soon, though, it's revealed the gringo had a career in pornography and blackmail -- and not just any pornography but snuff movies. The mystery is actually a pretty good one, although Carlos's solution of it is not for the purist, relying little on logic and a great deal on imaginative guesswork.
And, even though he works out what went on, this is not the resolution of the case that can be presented in public -- aside from anything else, the American embassy doesn't want to see the truth about the victim's profession emerge for fear of besmirching his home country's public image. So Carlos has to invent another solution, one that's more palatable to all concerned. Of course, that involves letting a serial burglar and rapist essentially walk free and the perpetrators of the worst crime in the novel go unpunished -- a crime beside which mere murder pales. But those are small prices to pay for maintaining the status quo.
It's not because of the viciousness of its satire or the unlikeability of its almost wholly amoral protagonist that I was a tad underimpressed by Tequila Blue. The problem with the book for me is that the plot seems to lose its way for quite a while in the middle. Part of this dreary stretch is a longish sequence that appears to make little sense (although it does help Carlos solve the murder); the Great Revelation of why it didn't make much sense had me spitting and cursing at the deception's cheesiness.
So, while I admired the novel's ambition, I was less convinced by some of the execution. On the other hand, it's a pretty short book, so there's no huge investment of time involved if you think it might be worth a try.
August 11, 2021
Diez creates a particularly unpleasant police detective here, in Carlos Hernandez, an aging misogynistic and alcohol-fuelled cop not concerned by indulging in corrupt practices in his job, or by having mistresses hardly concealed from his wife and adolescent children.
To get the most from this though, it is necessary to know a little bit about the author himself. He is an Argentinian, who while a student, joined an armed revolutionary group resisting the military dictatorship, was arrested, and spent two years in prison. On release, and then after several years in Europe, he setlled in Mexico City, where he attempted, through his writing and journalism, to expose corruption and malpractice in the police specifically.
So this book, published first in 1996, is such an example, a parody, in which a foreign visitor with a taste for blue movies that feature underage Mexican girls is found murdered in his hotel room. Hernandez puts all his energies into trying to track down the killer. But the strength of the book is to read between the lines of a rather insipid plot; Hernandez's ridiculously low wage, forcing his corrupt practices, and the policmean himself representing the whole system rather than just one man.
To get the most from this though, it is necessary to know a little bit about the author himself. He is an Argentinian, who while a student, joined an armed revolutionary group resisting the military dictatorship, was arrested, and spent two years in prison. On release, and then after several years in Europe, he setlled in Mexico City, where he attempted, through his writing and journalism, to expose corruption and malpractice in the police specifically.
So this book, published first in 1996, is such an example, a parody, in which a foreign visitor with a taste for blue movies that feature underage Mexican girls is found murdered in his hotel room. Hernandez puts all his energies into trying to track down the killer. But the strength of the book is to read between the lines of a rather insipid plot; Hernandez's ridiculously low wage, forcing his corrupt practices, and the policmean himself representing the whole system rather than just one man.
June 29, 2025
this felt like a fever dream of misogyny and beer
October 21, 2022
review of
Rolo Diez's Tequila Blue
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - October 21, 2022
I probably read about this author in a Paco Ignacio Taibo II novel. Taibo's based in Mexico & he's one of my favorite crime fiction writers so I trust his judgment about what writers I shd read, esp Spanish-language ones based in Mexico. About the author:
"Rolo Diez, born in Argentina in 1940, was imprisoned for two years during the military dictatorship and forced into exile. He now lives in Mexico City, where he works as a novelist, screenwriter and journalist. A number of his novels have been published in Spain, France and Germany. Rolo Diez was awarded the Hammett prize for best crime novel in Spanish in 1985, and won the Umbriel Prize at the Semana Negra festival of crime fiction in Spain in 2003. This is the first time he has been published in English." - 1st page visible upon opening the bk
This was originally published in Spanish in 1992 & then in English in 2004 so the author wd've been 63 or 64 when he finally had something appear in English. I'm always interested in such details partially b/c I've had people promise to translate work of mine into French & Russian & neither has happened.
More importantly, Diez is a survivor of the Dirty Wars in Argentina, one of the most horrific times of the oft-horrific 20th century. That, in itself, is more than enuf to make me interested in what he has to say. His cop protagonist is not adverse to making 'money on the side', so to speak, & the reader is introduced to that early on:
"I stopped off at a taco bar and had a quick breakfast. A soup with bread and lots of chilli in it – the perfect indigenous remedy to improve the way a hung-over guy sees the world, the human condition, and Mondays, to help persuade him he has to go to the office – then chopped steak and several coffees. The bar owner, Luis, wanted to know the price on .38 revolvers and 9mm pistols." - p 3
So he's got a hearty appetite & he sells guns illegally & he works for the Directorate of Operations. Given that this is an English translation, calling it the DO seems to be basing the name on the US agency:
"The Directorate of Operations (DO), less formally called the Clandestine Service, is a component of the US Central Intelligence Agency. It was known as the Directorate of Plans from 1951 to 1973; as the Directorate of Operations from 1973 to 2005; and as the National Clandestine Service (NCS) from 2005 to 2015.
"The DO "serves as the clandestine arm of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the national authority for the coordination, de-confliction, and evaluation of clandestine operations across the Intelligence Community of the United States""
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directo...
However, if I understand correctly, the actual Mexican ageny referred to wd be this:
"The Dirección Federal de Seguridad (Federal Security Directorate, DFS) was a Mexican intelligence agency and secret police. It was created in 1947 under Mexican president Miguel Alemán Valdés with the assistance of U.S. intelligence agencies (namely the CIA) as part of the Truman Doctrine of Soviet Containment, with the duty of "preserving the internal stability of Mexico against all forms subversion and terrorist threats". It was merged into the Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional (CISEN) in 1985.
"During the period from 1968 to the late 1970s (a period called the Mexican Dirty War), the DFS was accused of illegal detentions, torture, assassinations and forced disappearances. At least 347 complaints were received by the United Nations related to Mexican state crimes from 1960 to 1980.
"The agency was highly successful in thwarting and deterring any attempt by anti-government or pro-Soviet organizations to destabilize the country. However, it was a notoriously controversial government entity, and it was disbanded under the presidency of Miguel de la Madrid by the hand of his secretary of the interior Manuel Bartlett Díaz in 1985. Multiple agents were suspected (and later confirmed) of having links with criminal organizations, which included top members like Miguel Nazar Haro and Arturo "El Negro" Durazo Moreno. Other infamous former agents includes Rafael Aguilar Guajardo founding member of the Juárez Cartel and Juan José Esparragoza Moreno, who became one of the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel, which in 2021 was named as the most powerful drug trafficking organization in the world.
"Some such criminal exploits included a million dollar US-Mexico car theft ring, collaborating in drug trafficking with the Guadalajara Cartel (including the protection of the infamous "Colonia Bufalo" marijuana crops), training the Nicaraguan contras in drug trafficker owned ranches, the murder of journalist Manuel Buendia, for investigating ties between the DFS, the CIA and drug traffickers, and for having some degree of participation in, and providing cover to, the kidnapping and subsequent death of DEA agent Enrique Camarena Salazar."
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direcci...
In Diez's novel, there's this description:
"When the Directorate of Operations was set up, the old guard was up in arms. "All operations are secret. Only senators and undersecretaries could think of associating them with publicity."
"In private they said much harsher things.
"Eighteen years on, they still think we're a bunch of pseudo-intellectual politicos on the make, and even though we have a smaller budget than any other department, none of the cops can forgive us for being able to write our own names." - p 11
"["]We're the DO here, not illiterate patrolmen. That means we're supposed to use our heads. Justice has never been an exact science, Officer. It's all about relations between people and between countries, and higher interests that have to be treated with caution. Don't forget NAFTA and the foreign debt."" - p 77
Now, when I read this bk, I read it w/o the knowledge that I've added at the beginning of this review. As such, I had try to make sense of it w/in the context of the narrative. Given that Taibo's a very political novelist it's no wonder that he'd recommend Diez. The subtext here is that the DO has CIA backing & serves the political purpose of protecting US interests in Mexico, no matter how sleazy & criminal. NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, is something that the Anti-Globalization mvmt was all-too-aware of as a way of screwing the Mexican people into working for pathetic wages for American companies, such as car manufacturers that relocated from the US to Mexico to avoid paying the wages that American workers had won thru union activism. Reading this novel w/ this political knowledge makes the corruption of it much easier to understand the specifics of.
Diez has a sense of humor or, at least, depicts his DO detective as having one.
"We also have an assistant in the office. What you might call an office boy, if that weren't too frivolous and yankee a term for a federal government office in Mexico City. His only talent is never to be around when you need him, and when he is there, to take the whole morning to go to the bank on the corner and back. That's why we call him Silver Bullet; and on rare occasions we succeed in getting him to buy us cigarettes or a sandwich." - p 22
As it turns out, the Silver Bullet does have a talent for the types of intimidation that his superior officer excels at - he just needed the opportunity to make money to bring out this skill.
""We'll do what the Commander here decides is right," I explained, nodding at Silver Bullet.
""By the time we're finished with you, there won't be much left to drag to a lawyer." Silver Bullet was tougher than Bogart and Dirty Harry put together." - p 48
"A crime is a conflict of interests resolved by force, and no one should expect honesty where a conflict of interests is involved." - p 89
The detective really is trying to solve the crime but he's up against special interests the political ramifications of wch aren't immediately clear to him.
"Perhaps the man-woman in the hotel was the accountant's wife, using two blond wigs – one for a man, the other for a woman – to conceal her auburn hair and turn the porter's head. Perhaps Mrs Accountant went in disguised as a blonde woman and Mr Accountant came out disguised as a transvestite. She went in with Jones and killed him. He came up the service stairs and joined her. Afterwards, he went out the front way, while she sneaked out of the service exit. Then again, perhaps she went in with Jones and Mr Accountant came in with a local whore, and Valdez arrived with another one. Between them, they dispatched Jones. Mr Accountant dressed up as a transvestite and left. They either drugged the two whores or paid them a good wad of bank-notes, and Valdez left with Mrs Accountant. There were lots of possibilities" - p 102
Carlos Hernandez is the detective's name & he's class conscious:
"But I didn't need glasses to see as clear as day that more than one donkey with stripes on his arm seemed to think Carlos Hernandez had been put on this earth with the sole purpose of making their lives more comfortable and profitable. When they gave out tickets for this world, Hernandez was given second class, standing room only, the bleachers. And he was meant to be grateful he didn't get one of the tickets reserved for Indians, dogs, blacks, or women. (Even though the proper way to remember Baudelaire is with a few good drinks in you, it's not bad to do it with a bullet in the head either.) They even allowed him to go to university so he could get an education and be more useful to them." - p 120
All in all, this probably helped me understand Mexican secret police a bit.. but I'm not sure I 'enjoyed' it. I think I'll have to read more by Diez to ferret out how deep he runs.
Rolo Diez's Tequila Blue
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - October 21, 2022
I probably read about this author in a Paco Ignacio Taibo II novel. Taibo's based in Mexico & he's one of my favorite crime fiction writers so I trust his judgment about what writers I shd read, esp Spanish-language ones based in Mexico. About the author:
"Rolo Diez, born in Argentina in 1940, was imprisoned for two years during the military dictatorship and forced into exile. He now lives in Mexico City, where he works as a novelist, screenwriter and journalist. A number of his novels have been published in Spain, France and Germany. Rolo Diez was awarded the Hammett prize for best crime novel in Spanish in 1985, and won the Umbriel Prize at the Semana Negra festival of crime fiction in Spain in 2003. This is the first time he has been published in English." - 1st page visible upon opening the bk
This was originally published in Spanish in 1992 & then in English in 2004 so the author wd've been 63 or 64 when he finally had something appear in English. I'm always interested in such details partially b/c I've had people promise to translate work of mine into French & Russian & neither has happened.
More importantly, Diez is a survivor of the Dirty Wars in Argentina, one of the most horrific times of the oft-horrific 20th century. That, in itself, is more than enuf to make me interested in what he has to say. His cop protagonist is not adverse to making 'money on the side', so to speak, & the reader is introduced to that early on:
"I stopped off at a taco bar and had a quick breakfast. A soup with bread and lots of chilli in it – the perfect indigenous remedy to improve the way a hung-over guy sees the world, the human condition, and Mondays, to help persuade him he has to go to the office – then chopped steak and several coffees. The bar owner, Luis, wanted to know the price on .38 revolvers and 9mm pistols." - p 3
So he's got a hearty appetite & he sells guns illegally & he works for the Directorate of Operations. Given that this is an English translation, calling it the DO seems to be basing the name on the US agency:
"The Directorate of Operations (DO), less formally called the Clandestine Service, is a component of the US Central Intelligence Agency. It was known as the Directorate of Plans from 1951 to 1973; as the Directorate of Operations from 1973 to 2005; and as the National Clandestine Service (NCS) from 2005 to 2015.
"The DO "serves as the clandestine arm of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the national authority for the coordination, de-confliction, and evaluation of clandestine operations across the Intelligence Community of the United States""
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directo...
However, if I understand correctly, the actual Mexican ageny referred to wd be this:
"The Dirección Federal de Seguridad (Federal Security Directorate, DFS) was a Mexican intelligence agency and secret police. It was created in 1947 under Mexican president Miguel Alemán Valdés with the assistance of U.S. intelligence agencies (namely the CIA) as part of the Truman Doctrine of Soviet Containment, with the duty of "preserving the internal stability of Mexico against all forms subversion and terrorist threats". It was merged into the Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional (CISEN) in 1985.
"During the period from 1968 to the late 1970s (a period called the Mexican Dirty War), the DFS was accused of illegal detentions, torture, assassinations and forced disappearances. At least 347 complaints were received by the United Nations related to Mexican state crimes from 1960 to 1980.
"The agency was highly successful in thwarting and deterring any attempt by anti-government or pro-Soviet organizations to destabilize the country. However, it was a notoriously controversial government entity, and it was disbanded under the presidency of Miguel de la Madrid by the hand of his secretary of the interior Manuel Bartlett Díaz in 1985. Multiple agents were suspected (and later confirmed) of having links with criminal organizations, which included top members like Miguel Nazar Haro and Arturo "El Negro" Durazo Moreno. Other infamous former agents includes Rafael Aguilar Guajardo founding member of the Juárez Cartel and Juan José Esparragoza Moreno, who became one of the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel, which in 2021 was named as the most powerful drug trafficking organization in the world.
"Some such criminal exploits included a million dollar US-Mexico car theft ring, collaborating in drug trafficking with the Guadalajara Cartel (including the protection of the infamous "Colonia Bufalo" marijuana crops), training the Nicaraguan contras in drug trafficker owned ranches, the murder of journalist Manuel Buendia, for investigating ties between the DFS, the CIA and drug traffickers, and for having some degree of participation in, and providing cover to, the kidnapping and subsequent death of DEA agent Enrique Camarena Salazar."
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direcci...
In Diez's novel, there's this description:
"When the Directorate of Operations was set up, the old guard was up in arms. "All operations are secret. Only senators and undersecretaries could think of associating them with publicity."
"In private they said much harsher things.
"Eighteen years on, they still think we're a bunch of pseudo-intellectual politicos on the make, and even though we have a smaller budget than any other department, none of the cops can forgive us for being able to write our own names." - p 11
"["]We're the DO here, not illiterate patrolmen. That means we're supposed to use our heads. Justice has never been an exact science, Officer. It's all about relations between people and between countries, and higher interests that have to be treated with caution. Don't forget NAFTA and the foreign debt."" - p 77
Now, when I read this bk, I read it w/o the knowledge that I've added at the beginning of this review. As such, I had try to make sense of it w/in the context of the narrative. Given that Taibo's a very political novelist it's no wonder that he'd recommend Diez. The subtext here is that the DO has CIA backing & serves the political purpose of protecting US interests in Mexico, no matter how sleazy & criminal. NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, is something that the Anti-Globalization mvmt was all-too-aware of as a way of screwing the Mexican people into working for pathetic wages for American companies, such as car manufacturers that relocated from the US to Mexico to avoid paying the wages that American workers had won thru union activism. Reading this novel w/ this political knowledge makes the corruption of it much easier to understand the specifics of.
Diez has a sense of humor or, at least, depicts his DO detective as having one.
"We also have an assistant in the office. What you might call an office boy, if that weren't too frivolous and yankee a term for a federal government office in Mexico City. His only talent is never to be around when you need him, and when he is there, to take the whole morning to go to the bank on the corner and back. That's why we call him Silver Bullet; and on rare occasions we succeed in getting him to buy us cigarettes or a sandwich." - p 22
As it turns out, the Silver Bullet does have a talent for the types of intimidation that his superior officer excels at - he just needed the opportunity to make money to bring out this skill.
""We'll do what the Commander here decides is right," I explained, nodding at Silver Bullet.
""By the time we're finished with you, there won't be much left to drag to a lawyer." Silver Bullet was tougher than Bogart and Dirty Harry put together." - p 48
"A crime is a conflict of interests resolved by force, and no one should expect honesty where a conflict of interests is involved." - p 89
The detective really is trying to solve the crime but he's up against special interests the political ramifications of wch aren't immediately clear to him.
"Perhaps the man-woman in the hotel was the accountant's wife, using two blond wigs – one for a man, the other for a woman – to conceal her auburn hair and turn the porter's head. Perhaps Mrs Accountant went in disguised as a blonde woman and Mr Accountant came out disguised as a transvestite. She went in with Jones and killed him. He came up the service stairs and joined her. Afterwards, he went out the front way, while she sneaked out of the service exit. Then again, perhaps she went in with Jones and Mr Accountant came in with a local whore, and Valdez arrived with another one. Between them, they dispatched Jones. Mr Accountant dressed up as a transvestite and left. They either drugged the two whores or paid them a good wad of bank-notes, and Valdez left with Mrs Accountant. There were lots of possibilities" - p 102
Carlos Hernandez is the detective's name & he's class conscious:
"But I didn't need glasses to see as clear as day that more than one donkey with stripes on his arm seemed to think Carlos Hernandez had been put on this earth with the sole purpose of making their lives more comfortable and profitable. When they gave out tickets for this world, Hernandez was given second class, standing room only, the bleachers. And he was meant to be grateful he didn't get one of the tickets reserved for Indians, dogs, blacks, or women. (Even though the proper way to remember Baudelaire is with a few good drinks in you, it's not bad to do it with a bullet in the head either.) They even allowed him to go to university so he could get an education and be more useful to them." - p 120
All in all, this probably helped me understand Mexican secret police a bit.. but I'm not sure I 'enjoyed' it. I think I'll have to read more by Diez to ferret out how deep he runs.
January 24, 2020
Tequila Blue is a gritty, raw criticism of Mexican police and their corruption. The story is even disturbing in parts, but Diez uses that effectively to emphasize the acceptance of corruption as a functioning component of the overall criminal justice(?) system in Mexico. It's an integral part of the fabric that reaches all levels of the system, from common burglars to diplomat-connected high society types. Deal with it.
Change "listened to him" to "read Tequila Blue" in that sentence and it describes some of my thoughts while reading this book. Surely the author is exaggerating, right? I think that sentence above is his admission to this. So the question the story left me with is really about the degree to which he exaggerated the corruption to make his point. I settled on this—if half of the actions of the main character, Carlos, and his police brethren are somewhat reflective of how things actually work...wow.
The author's pace is a bit fast-forwardy—he conveys enough detail to make you think you're pretty sure about what just happened, but not entirely. I don't know if translation amplified or softened that, but I definitely had to adjust to it. One particular sequence of events felt too brief, but by the end I was mostly comfortable with his style.
And, the book introduced me to the concept of "breakfast beer." So there's that.
"As I listened to him, I was thinking how people find it necessary to exaggerate: no one can describe how they had a coffee without embroidering the story." (p. 109 in the Bitter Lemon Press edition I read)
Change "listened to him" to "read Tequila Blue" in that sentence and it describes some of my thoughts while reading this book. Surely the author is exaggerating, right? I think that sentence above is his admission to this. So the question the story left me with is really about the degree to which he exaggerated the corruption to make his point. I settled on this—if half of the actions of the main character, Carlos, and his police brethren are somewhat reflective of how things actually work...wow.
The author's pace is a bit fast-forwardy—he conveys enough detail to make you think you're pretty sure about what just happened, but not entirely. I don't know if translation amplified or softened that, but I definitely had to adjust to it. One particular sequence of events felt too brief, but by the end I was mostly comfortable with his style.
And, the book introduced me to the concept of "breakfast beer." So there's that.
September 29, 2021
2 stars
Pros
+ Argentine author
+ Spanish translation
+ Carlito (MC): a dirty cop with both a wife and a mistress and their kids to look after
+ plot: Carlito investigates the murder of a rich, white "filmmaker" of dark porn, including snuff films, while trying to make as much side money as he can
+ themes: corruption, greed, loyalty, family
Neutral
/ The point is that there's no escaping the system... either by evil means or trying to do good. So the point is that there is no point.
Cons
-Diez spent time in jail for his protests of the Argentine military and police state, so I *think* this entire book is a critique of the government and police systems, of Carlito, of how no one wins when everyone is dirty... However, I hated being in Carlito's head, both when he was with his women, with his superiors, with his underlings, in any setting basically.
- The male gaze is a laser beam in here.
TW: murder, porn, prostitution, snuff films, rape (off-page), rape fantasies, drug trafficking (off-page), dirty cops, cheating, guns, physical assault, overt misogyny
Pros
+ Argentine author
+ Spanish translation
+ Carlito (MC): a dirty cop with both a wife and a mistress and their kids to look after
+ plot: Carlito investigates the murder of a rich, white "filmmaker" of dark porn, including snuff films, while trying to make as much side money as he can
+ themes: corruption, greed, loyalty, family
Neutral
/ The point is that there's no escaping the system... either by evil means or trying to do good. So the point is that there is no point.
Cons
-Diez spent time in jail for his protests of the Argentine military and police state, so I *think* this entire book is a critique of the government and police systems, of Carlito, of how no one wins when everyone is dirty... However, I hated being in Carlito's head, both when he was with his women, with his superiors, with his underlings, in any setting basically.
- The male gaze is a laser beam in here.
TW: murder, porn, prostitution, snuff films, rape (off-page), rape fantasies, drug trafficking (off-page), dirty cops, cheating, guns, physical assault, overt misogyny
July 16, 2018
An interesting short read, with a scathing take on Mexico's corruption. The plot wanders a bit, which I found distracting, and the present tense narration irritated me. However, for its refusal to cower at the altar of political correctness, I give it full marks. I suspect the read would be better in the original Spanish.
June 11, 2017
RATING: 3.0
April 26, 2013
In Diez's Tequila Blue, we see his sympatico character, Carlito Hernandez, a cop who is honest by his lights, but sees nothing wrong in dealing in arms, running a protection racket, or maintaining two households (a wife and kids in one, a mistress and kids in another). He is that non-pareil, the Mexican macho man, capable of deep love (his kids adore him) and incredible selfishness (he'll sleep with any woman who gives him an erection - and he is quite catholic in this department). This is as thorough a social criticism as you can find of the deep corruption in Mexico: the police barely get paid and so have to fund their pursuit of serious crime by tolerating and abetting lesser crime. The entire structure of justice is rotten, of course, with everyone on the take; women recognise their relative powerlessness in this male-dominated hierarchy, and promote their own agendas with sexual cunning. On top of it all is the overbearing presence of the mighty neighbour to the North from where arrive protected individuals seeking release for their tawdriest and most brutal passions among the impoverished and desperate Mexicans. Carlito seeks his own version of justice for the indigent and the brutalised, and braves gang wars and politicos and large quantities of alcohol in his quest. This is a darkly humorous and deeply satirical novella. Don't miss it.
June 30, 2013
from http://weeksnotice.blogspot.com/2013/...
I am always on the lookout for good Latin American mysteries/crime novels in translation. Rolo Diez's Tequila Blue is one of the few I have disliked. The main character, a cop in Mexico City, is amoral and unlikeable, and I ended up not caring what happened to anyone, whether the crime was solved, or anything else. It was short, so I sped through rather than just set it down.
I suppose the intent was to immerse you in the corruption, the mordidas, the utter hopelessness of the police bureaucracy in Mexico. At least in this case, that could've been achieved just as well in a short story. Stick with Paco Ignacio Taibo II instead.
I am always on the lookout for good Latin American mysteries/crime novels in translation. Rolo Diez's Tequila Blue is one of the few I have disliked. The main character, a cop in Mexico City, is amoral and unlikeable, and I ended up not caring what happened to anyone, whether the crime was solved, or anything else. It was short, so I sped through rather than just set it down.
I suppose the intent was to immerse you in the corruption, the mordidas, the utter hopelessness of the police bureaucracy in Mexico. At least in this case, that could've been achieved just as well in a short story. Stick with Paco Ignacio Taibo II instead.
February 29, 2008
But the epilogue is 5 star. Diaz is an Argentine now living in Mexico. Not his best work and nowhere nearly as much fun to read as Paco Taibo II, who also sets his crime novels in Mexico City.
February 4, 2013
erm.... note to self, most translated books are not as good as the original. crappy read :(
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