Review: Velvet Was the Night

A young woman has van­ished. Her neigh­bour Maite is look­ing for her because she’s not will­ing to feed her cat for­ev­er. A pos­si­bly CIA-fund­ed gang­ster, El Elvis, is look­ing for her too, for some­what dark­er reasons.

Vel­vet Was the Night by Sil­via Moreno-Gar­cia is a mys­tery nov­el, a slow-burn noir set in Mex­i­co City in the 1970s. It’s fun­ny, trag­ic, star­tling, and vio­lent. It’s full of comics and Elvis and unrest. It’s ter­ri­fy­ing at times, sad at oth­er times, and full of char­ac­ters you root for and against, even if you’re not real­ly sure you’d want to meet them.

I thought it was great, and I’m look­ing for­ward to read­ing more from this author.

Buy a copy: McNal­ly-Robin­son | Book­shop | Ama­zon, if you must