Almuzara 2009
HAMMETT AWARD FOR BEST CRIME NOVEL PUBLISHED IN 2009

A politician is executed in broad daylight in a marginal neighborhood on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. A beauty queen seeks the help of a lawyer who has been widowed by gunfire twice. A cruise ship runs aground in the muddy Río de la Plata, serving as a banquet for a gang of kidnappers. Among the tourists, a Colombian drug baron and his lover become the main course. Meanwhile, a collector of human heads reveals secrets to two police officers locked in a duel that has little to do with the law and much to do with their loyalties and disappointments.

Buenos Aires drifts like a small boat full of survivors from successive disasters, navigating a sea without shores or horizons.

This drift is the raw material Guillermo Orsi uses to build his Ciudad Santa: seductive, violent… and striking.

Rights sold in English (MacLehose Press) and Chinese (New Star Press).