Name: Like Flies from Afar
ISBN: 9781786896988

K. Ferrari

'Sharp, savage and tense' Sunday Times Crime Club SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA CRIME FICTION IN TRANSLATION DAGGER Luis Machi has had enemies for a long time thanks to his corrupt business dealings and cooperation with the military junta’s coup, not to mention the numerous infidelities of his love life. What is new, however, is the corpse chained to the boot of Machi’s car with furry pink handcuffs . . . Someone is trying to set him up and the number of suspects is incalculable. Machi is stuck dredging his guilty past for clues and trying to dispose of the mystery corpse. But time is just another enemy and it’s running out fast.

Like Flies from Afar

Oligrachs gone wild, in a brutal and darkly comic Argentinian noir Mr. Luis Machi is an unforgettably loathsome and hilarious Argentinian oligarch who made his fortune collaborating with the worst elements of society—parasites, pushers, and secret policemen. He has a cocaine habit, a collection of three hundred ties, ten million dollars in the bank, and a bloody corpse in the trunk of his BMW . . . but as far as the body goes, he's completely innocent. He has no idea who the victim could be, or who among his many, many enemies might be trying to frame him for murder, and he doesn't have much time to find out . . . The profane and uproarious Like Flies from Afar follows Machi through twenty-four hours of his eventful life—one full day in which to solve this mystery, or at least to make sure he isn't the one to take the fall. The first novel to appear in English by the "subway janitor by night, novelist by day," who began his writing career while an illegal immigrant in the United States, Like Flies from Afar will demonstrate why K. Ferrari is already an award-winning star of international crime fiction. A hardboiled noir thriller, a whodunit, a black comedy, and a filthy catalog of the excesses of wealth, this is a Jim Thompson novel for the globalized world.

A Novel

Thank you Netgalley, Farrar, Straus and Giroux and K. Ferrari for allowing me to read this advance copy in exchange for an honest review

First let me say I tried to finish this book in good faith but I couldn't. The more I read it, the more frustrated and confused I got. It got to the point that it wasn't enjoyable. I read 63% of the book hoping that it would get better and things would start making sense....it didn't.

I requested the book because it sounded like a humorous madcap adventure. What I got was a book that was so filled with profanity that it distracted from the story. It was like the author was in competition with himself to see how many curse words he could get on a page. I am by no means a prude and have a rather sailorish vocabulary myself but this was over the top. His depiction of women....if meant to be humorous was degrading. I felt there was way to many names of characters in the story and it got confusing as to who was who, and what part they played in the story. Some names only appeared once or twice and never again. The writing was very choppy and it was hard to follow what was going on. It was all over the place and hard to follow. This could all be attributed to the translation of the book. Sometimes when words are spoken in one language and translated into another, it loses something along the way. 

I'm curious to see how this book does and if others feel the same way. I may try to pick it up again some day and try to figure out what is going on in the story.

Like Flies from Afar

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