The devil of the provinces

A biologist returns to his Colombian hometown after 15 years abroad and tumbles into a mystery in this metaphysical crime novel. Cárdenas' unnamed protagonist returns home to his mother licking his wounds. He's recently divorced, and his research funding has evaporated. He's taken a job, apparently the only one he can find, as a substitute teacher at an all-girls boarding school. His only friend is his pot dealer. But a chance encounter with an old acquaintance leads him to reconsider the unsolved murder of his brother, a closeted gay man with political aspirations. This is a detective novel of sorts, yet it's not a spoiler to say it won't end in a Scooby Doo--like reveal. There is a web, but it may not have a center. Was the narrator's brother killed by unscrupulous palm oil executives or a jealous lover? And does the murder have anything to do with the Knight of Faith, a church "for the true believers, with a parking lot for UFOs and everything"? Cárdenas generates queasy intrigue from something as strange as the birth of a devil child and as mundane as a text message that has been read but not replied to. He can find poetry in anything, like a flicked joint that becomes "the last leg of the smoking insect, a jot of almost-ash that died in the wet grass without putting up a fight, swathed in the song of a thousand frogs." This is Cárdenas' second novel to be translated into English, after Ornamental, which was a finalist for the 2021 PEN Translation Award, and more translations are eagerly anticipated. Briskly paced, thoughtful, and truly weird: a whodunit that takes on the very idea of blame. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.