There's only so much serial killing a man can take before he wants to switch to something less grim, and he falls smack into politics. Paco Ignacio Taibo is one of Mexico's most famous writers, and in The Uncomfortable Dead, he collaborates with another famous Mexican, Insurgent Subcomandante Marcos, to produce one of the most satisfying books I've read in a while. The two authors write alternate chapters, and who would have thought that the Zapatista leader had such a deft touch, such a feeling for language? The Investigative Commission, as the Zapatistas call their main detective, Elias Contreras, is an Indio plodder, a man who worries and worries at problems until their solutions are harassed into revelation. He is uneducated and unliterary, but he has a simple intuition and a mind that can cut through obfuscation essentially because it is so simple. He spends his chapters dealing with petty crime, missing persons, and a murder in Chiapas. Meanwhile, Taibo's detective, Hector Belascoaran Shayne, is a man in Mexico City investigating one Morales, who was said to have involved himself in sundry political murders, enriched himself, and then vanished without a trace. As the book progresses, Contreras' and Shayne's investigations converge, but not before major diversions into Mexican political history, and trenchant critiques of the Americans and the Mexican conservatives. Good stuff, especially if you avoid all the political diatribes.
13 years ago I spent a summer as an international human rights observer in Chiapas, and thought of an idea for a detective novel while I was there. I got into political writing and kept the novel on the back burner, though I thought a detective novel would be a great way to introduce the conflict and the Zapatistas to people. When one of the best detective novelists in the world co-wrote a detective novel with the military leader and spokesperson of the Zapatistas, I thought maybe my book would be redundant. I'll still probably publish it some day, but Muertos Incomodos (The Uncomfortable Dead) is fantastic.I had read Taibo's biography of Che Guevara (also highly recommended) and was a follower of everything that Marcos writes. I loved watching their collaboration and the idea of Taibo's detective, Héctor Belascoarán Shayne, working with a peasant detective from the Zapatista communities, was so much fun to read. I like that they discussed both the organized right wing in Mexico as well as the corporate land takeover angle. This is a little bit more than a novel, it is kind of a piece of history, like everything Marcos writes.
What do You think about The Uncomfortable Dead (2006)?
i picked up this book because i had heard many good things about it. and, i thought it would be neat to read marcos, i was thinking that it would political but not necessarily overtly.i was wrong.and i didnt like the style or the writing really. i made it about four chapters into the book and decided not to finish it, the switching was doing it for me and i didnt really have a great hold on the story.at first i really liked the way marcos was writing, but quickly it became tedious. i understand that you are supposed to write what you know, but writing himself as an abstract character seemed a bit lame to me. i dont really like mystery novels, and i was hoping for something more like jonathon lethem.
—Brian
I really wanted to give this book five stars.It's a fascinating story comparing two leftist detectives in Mexico, one from the Zapatistas and one from Mexico City, as they unravel a web of injustices perpetrated on the struggling poor. It's written in a fairly unique style, and even though I'm not terribly familiar with mexican radical history, I was able to keep up and learn quite a bit. It was slow for moments, but in ways that I felt served the story.It just lost a star because of some really, really, awfully trite shit in relation to a trans character.
—Margaret Killjoy
