According to Paco Ignacio Taibo II, heroes, even small heroes like Héctor Belascoarán Shayne, help us reclaim our rights: our right to romanticism, to adventure, to the sense that our lives are not shallow but infinitely deep, connected to history and to "all those who have no rights, those who suffer abuse their whole lives, people on the margins, the disinherited, the lepers, the poor, the least of the least."
The above is an excerpt from James Sallis' Afterword to An Easy Thing, which pays great tribute to the life and writing of Paco Ignacio Taibo II, an author famous in his home country of Mexico and deserving of a much wider readership in the U.S. and beyond.
Having discovered the novels of Paco Ignacio Taibo II, I'm over the Mexican moon. I would gladly write an extended essay on An Easy Thing, the first of four books featuring the colorful Héctor Belascoarán Shayne that have been translated into English. But, alas, I'm writing a book review and will focus on the author's heroic gumshoe as a portal into this classic of contemporary fiction, first published in 1990.
MAJOR BREAK
One day, while walking out of a movie theater, Belascoarán, age thirty, broke with his past: he divorced his wife (no children), quit his job as an industrial engineer, and traded it all in to become a private detective sharing a grimy office on Artículo 123 with a plumber, an engineer, and an upholsterer - gents he sometimes ropes into helping him crack a case. I suspect many Mexican men, trapped in conventional jobs, would love to make a similar break. Oh well, at least they can identify with Belascoarán.
THREE AT ONCE
The incomparable Paco doesn't hold back. An Easy Thing is an exuberant thriller - one prime reason being that Paco has Belascoarán take on three cases at once. The first involves investigating rumors that legendary revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata is still alive. The second case comes from a luscious soap opera star who hires Belascoarán to prevent her sixteen-year-old daughter, Elena, from committing suicide. The third revolves around the murder of an engineer, an executive at the Delex factory, where management is in the midst of a hostile labor dispute.
Belascoarán reflects: “What was he getting himself into? What did he think he was doing taking on three jobs at once? The sweet flame of a temporary insanity tickled his brain, and he smiled, thinking of the old maxim of his pirate father: “The more complicated the better; the more impossible, the more beautiful.”
AH, FAMILY
It's 1977, and Belascoarán’s mother has just died. Belascoarán, along with his sister, Elisa, and his brother, Carlos, must deal with her will. This leads the three siblings to uncover secrets through their long-dead father's last letter (and accompanying notebook) addressed to them, outlining the adventurous, violent life he led before settling down with their mother in Mexico. The letter begins, “My story is a story of struggle, a product of the times I lived in. Were it up to me, I would have preferred not to have stained my hands with the blood of other men.” Goodness. Belascoarán discovers his dear old dad's revolutionary life in Europe and along the African coast, especially during the Spanish Civil War, rivals that of Emiliano Zapata. Being his father's son, it's clear now why he rebelled against a boring, middle-class workaday world and became a detective.
TO BE MEXICAN
Belascoarán drives along the Mexico City streets, cold and tired, yet he feels good. “It was the city, the city he loved so intensely, so selflessly, welcoming him with that dirty gray dawn. And more than the city, even more, it was the people.” The streets and landmarks are always cited by name. As readers, we're given a powerful sense of what it means to be Mexican and live and work in Mexico City. And there's something Belascoarán wants his fellow countrymen never to forget: “If there's one thing this country won't forgive you for, it's that you take your life too seriously, that you can't see the joke.”
SOCIAL COMMENTARY
Many are the times Belascoarán (and indirectly Paco Ignacio Taibo II) takes aim at the Mexican social and economic system. Addressing one blighted section of the city, he muses, "Out there, modern industry took a step backward into the nineteenth century, to the days before the invention of hard hats, to the era of rusty steel, lost time sheets, cheap raw materials, and thieving bosses who stole with impunity from the workers' saving accounts. There in Santa Clara the intrinsic filth of Mexican capital, in other places hidden behind white-washed walls and hygienic facades, was laid open for all to see."
SODA POP AND CIGARETTES
Unlike many detectives in crime novels, Belascoarán doesn't drink booze or beer; he drinks lots of soda pop. So charming. One more reason Paco's hero is both an endearing and enduring character. Sure, he has his faults and makes a string of very human mistakes, but his eagerness to pursue the truth and smoke out nasty evildoers, putting himself in great danger along the way, makes for a detective with great appeal. For example, at one juncture Belascoarán saves Elena by taking on and beating up three young thugs in a street fight. She calls him her guardian angel. From first page to last, we're right there rooting for the author's chain-smoking sleuthhound.
I can't recommend An Easy Thing strongly enough, especially to my fellow Gringos. Have a taste of outstanding Mexican literature. I'll conclude with a sparkling statement from Paco Ignacio Taibo II: "Reading is the most subversive activity in life. Open any true book and you begin to see the world through somebody else's eyes. Nothing is more redeeming than that, or more dangerous."
Mexico City, among the great cities of the world
Spanish-Mexican author and political activist Paco Ignacio Taibo II, born 1949
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