Like Flies from Afar by Kike Ferrari

Like Flies from Afar by Kike Ferrari reads like slimmed down Jim Thompson and an X-rated version at that, with big city Buenos Aires standing in for small town Texas.

Our central character is Mr. Machi, capitalist kingpin who has built his own empire starting out with a textile mill and restaurant but now spanning many businesses, both legal and illegal, for as Mr. Machi tells us, "I did what I needed to do."

But today Mr. Machi is in for a surprise while driving his sleek $200,000 BMW home for breakfast following yet another round of cocaine-fueled sex. For, while driving his "black bolt of lightning," Mr. Machi must deal with a flat tire.

Ah, Mr. Machi, keep your cool. "Above all, he must be ready to put up with the looks of scorn born of resentment on the faces of the passersby in their ramshackle Dunas, Peugeot 504s, and Renault 19s - cars that cost what he spends on a whore or on a lunch out - as they pass the BMW stranded on the roadside, the same BMW they saw shoot past minutes before like a black bolt of lightning."

Mr. Machi gets out of the car to examines his right front tire, the blown tire. Three caltrops! Mr. Machi knows he's been sabotaged. But, by who...and why now?

Mr. Machi pops the trunk and feels around for the spare tire. As per Kike Ferrari, "And this is where the story really begins." For Mr. Machi discovers someone had put a headless body covered with blood in the trunk of his BMW with the gloss finish, his BMW that glides over pavement like a black bolt of lightning, his BMW that's the envy of all the losers in their Dunas, Peugeot 504s and Renault 19s.

From this point onward, we witness Mr. Machi's nightmare adventure in dealing with the headless body and destroying all evidence, all the while considering the many suspects who set him up like this.

The list of those who would have good motive goes on and on, after all, he's cast aside, fucked over, degraded and destroyed many people to get where he is now. "I did what I needed to do."

Was it someone from his restaurant, his textile mill, from the boxing match he fixed, a gangster, a former mistress, one of his thug security guards, his wife, his rich father-in-law, his kids, his brute key employee who was a torturer in his past life? Mr. Machi takes a gulp and recognizes one thing's for sure: he's all alone.

Four epigraphs grace Ferrari's novel - one from Jim Thompson, one from David Goodis, one from Karl Marx, and this one from Rodolfo Walsh that gets its own page: "If someone wants to read this book as a regular old thriller, that's their choice." So appropriate since in the great tradition of Latin American literature, Like Flies From Afar hits hard on issues social and most especially political.

To take one example, Mr. Machi reads the book his daughter in college left in his car, how Michel Foucault came to write The Order of Things: "This book first arose out of a passage in Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought." Mr. Machi's reaction? He flings the book out the window. Come on, Mr. Machi, you might learn a thing or two if you opened your eyes to the consequences of your diabolical, deadly deeds.  Scratch the surface and you're a complete swine, the type of lowlife that helps to perpetuate totalitarian regimes. 

This is crime fiction compressed down to half the length of a novel by Jim Thompson or David Goodis, more in the range of James M. Cain's classics, Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice.

Why can't more authors of crime fiction write short, fast-paced novels like this one? Why do they need 400 pages? Come on Jo Nesbø, Tana French, Anthony Horowitz, Jussi Adler-Olsen. You all could learn a lesson from Kike Ferrari.


Crime fiction author Kike Ferrari from Argentina