The Foreign Girls by Sergio Olguín

This is the second novel of the author’s Veronica Rosenthal series to be translated into English and follows on from the events of the previous title, The Fragility of Bodies. Veronica, an investigative journalist, has gone travelling through the north of Argentina, a holiday to escape the stress of the aftermath of her exposure of the mafia gang which was betting on the lives of youngsters playing chicken against trains in the first novel. In the small town of Yacanto del Valle she meets, and hooks up with, two women who are also travelling: an Italian and a Norwegian. They get invited to a party where Veronica falls out with them and they part ways. But then Veronica discovers the two were murdered that night and the scene made to look like a black magic ritual.

 

Veronica returns to Yacanto del Valle to investigate and finds a town which town holds many secrets, with powerful landowners holding sway over the townsfolk and able to do whatever they want, and corruption in the institutions of the state. Complicating her investigations is the fact that one of the hitmen from the last novel is pursuing Veronica looking for revenge.

 

The Foreign Girls is a solid novel and is well-plotted, giving a good insight into the corruption which blights Argentine society. I have read similar non-fiction accounts and so the depiction the author gives appears accurate. Like much of South America, the country is in desperate need of land reform and in rural areas particularly, the wealthy enjoy near-immunity from prosecution. Similarly, there are still dark shadows left from the dictatorship it endured in the not-so-distant past. 

That all said, while I enjoyed this novel, I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as the previous title. In part this because The Fragility of Bodies had a more original plot than The Foreign Girls, but also because I found the writing in this second outing to be a bit more stilted.

 

The Foreign Girls remains a great novel however, and with The Fragility of Bodies it had much to live up to, so perhaps it's harsh to compare it with its predecessor.

 

3 out of 5 stars