Popular South American Mystery Books

Find mystery books written by authors from South America for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge. (12)

1.

All My Goodbyes by Mariana Dimopulos EN

0 Ratings
Description:
This highly acclaimed contemporary Argentinian novel is the first in Giramondo’s Literature of the South series, featuring innovative fiction and non-fiction by writers of the southern hemisphere. It is translated from the Spanish by Australian translator Alice Whitmore. All My Goodbyes is a novel told in overlapping vignettes, which follow the travels of a young Argentinian woman across Europe (Málaga, Madrid, Heidelberg, Berlin) and back to Argentina (Buenos Aires, Patagonia) as she flees from situation to situation, job to job, and relationship to relationship. Within the complexity of the ... continue

2.

Child's Play by Carmen Posadas EN

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Description:
Luisa Davila is an established Spanish mystery writer who decides that her detective's next case will involve the suspicious death of a child at an elite private day school. However, following the death of one of her daughter's schoolmates, Luisa is troubled by memories of her own past.

3.

Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa EN

Rating: 3 (1 vote)
Country: South America / Peru flag Peru
Description:
Set in an isolated, rundown community in the Peruvian Andes, Vargas Llosa's novel tells the story of a series of mysterious disappearances involving the Shining Path guerrillas and a local couple performing cannibalistic sacrifices with strange similiarities to the Dionysian rituals of ancient Greece. Part detective novel and part political allegory, it offers a panoramic view of Peruvian society; not only of the current political violence and social upheaval, but also of the country's past and its connection to Indian culture and pre-Hispanic mysticism.

4.

Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro EN

Rating: 4 (11 votes)
Description:
In a single day, a journey across Buenos Aires reveals a daughter to her mother, a mother to herself, and the oppressive weight of received ideas to women connected by a fleeting encounter, twenty years before.

5.

Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin EN

Rating: 4 (8 votes)
Description:
NOW A FEATURE FILM COMING SOON TO NETFLIX "Genius." —Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker Finalist for the Man Booker International Prize! Experience the blazing, surreal sensation of a fever dream... A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her. She’s not his mother. He's not her child. Together, they tell a haunting story of broken souls, toxins, and the power and desperation of family. Fever Dream is a nightmare come to life, a ghost story for the real world, a love story and a cautionary tale. One of the freshest new voices to come out of the... continue

6.

Kill the Boy Band by Goldy Moldavsky EN

0 Ratings
Country: South America / Peru flag Peru
Description:
Four fan-girls of The Ruperts, sneak away to a hotel in Manhattan to see their favorite boy band, but when one of them literally drags Rupert Pierpont to their room and they tie him up, things get complicated--and when Rupert is killed things go from bad to worse.

7.

Kill the Next One by Federico Axat EN

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Description:
An audacious psychological thriller where nothing is what it seems. Ted McKay had it all: a beautiful wife, two daughters, a high-paying job. But after being diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor he finds himself with a gun to his temple, ready to pull the trigger. Then the doorbell rings. A stranger makes him a proposition: why not kill two deserving men before dying? The first target is a criminal, and the second is a man with terminal cancer who, like Ted, wants to die. After executing these kills, Ted will become someone else's next target, like a kind of suicidal daisy chain. Ted understa... continue


9.

Shantytown by César Aira EN

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Description:
At last, a noir novel from the Argentine master of suspense and surprises Maxi, a middle-class, directionless ox of a young man who helps the trash pickers of Buenos Aires’s shantytown, attracts the attention of a corrupt, trigger-happy policeman who will use anyone — including two innocent teenage girls — to break a drug ring that he believes is operating within the slum. A strange new drug, a brightly lit carousel of a slum, the kindness of strangers, gunplay... no matter how serious the subject matter, and despite Aira’s “fascination with urban violence and the sinister underside of Latin A... continue

10.

The Name of Death by Klester Cavalcanti EN

Rating: 3 (1 vote)
Description:
The powerful true-life story of a Brazilian boy who could have been a fisherman but instead became the biggest professional killer known to the world--soon to be a major motion picture. Julio Santana as seen through the eyes of acclaimed investigative reporter Klester Cavalcanti is not a monster--he is a loyal son, a family man, a devout Christian who is tormented by his conscience with every shot. But in a cruel and lawless area of Brazil, where every life has its price, respect for life is a luxury that he can't afford. Trained by his uncle, an assassin, and initiated in murder at 17 years o... continue