Genre Fiction
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Velvet Was the Night
GOOD MORNING AMERICA BUZZ PICK • From the bestselling author of Mexican Gothic comes a riveting noir about a daydreaming secretary, a lonesome enforcer, and the mystery of a missing woman they're both desperate to find.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • NPR The Washington Post • New York Public Library • "An adrenalized, darkly romantic journey."-The Washington Post
1970s, Mexico City. Maite is a secretary who lives for one thing: the latest issue of Secret Romance. While student protests and political unrest consume the city, Maite escapes into stories of passion and danger.
Her next-door neighbor, Leonora, a beautiful art student, seems to live a life of intrigue and romance that Maite envies. When Leonora disappears under suspicious circumstances, Maite finds herself searching for the missing woman-and journeying deeper into Leonora's secret life of student radicals and dissidents.
Meanwhile, someone else is also looking for Leonora at the behest of his boss, a shadowy figure who commands goon squads dedicated to squashing political activists. Elvis is an eccentric criminal who longs to escape his own life: He loathes violence and loves old movies and rock 'n' roll. But as Elvis searches for the missing woman, he watches Maite from a distance-and comes to regard her as a kindred spirit who shares his love of music and the unspoken loneliness of his heart.
Now as Maite and Elvis come closer to discovering the truth behind Leonora's disappearance, they can no longer escape the danger that threatens to consume their lives, with hitmen, government agents, and Russian spies all aiming to protect Leonora's secrets-at gunpoint.
Velvet Was the Night is an edgy, simmering historical novel for lovers of smoky noirs and anti-heroes.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • NPR The Washington Post • New York Public Library • "An adrenalized, darkly romantic journey."-The Washington Post
1970s, Mexico City. Maite is a secretary who lives for one thing: the latest issue of Secret Romance. While student protests and political unrest consume the city, Maite escapes into stories of passion and danger.
Her next-door neighbor, Leonora, a beautiful art student, seems to live a life of intrigue and romance that Maite envies. When Leonora disappears under suspicious circumstances, Maite finds herself searching for the missing woman-and journeying deeper into Leonora's secret life of student radicals and dissidents.
Meanwhile, someone else is also looking for Leonora at the behest of his boss, a shadowy figure who commands goon squads dedicated to squashing political activists. Elvis is an eccentric criminal who longs to escape his own life: He loathes violence and loves old movies and rock 'n' roll. But as Elvis searches for the missing woman, he watches Maite from a distance-and comes to regard her as a kindred spirit who shares his love of music and the unspoken loneliness of his heart.
Now as Maite and Elvis come closer to discovering the truth behind Leonora's disappearance, they can no longer escape the danger that threatens to consume their lives, with hitmen, government agents, and Russian spies all aiming to protect Leonora's secrets-at gunpoint.
Velvet Was the Night is an edgy, simmering historical novel for lovers of smoky noirs and anti-heroes.
Editorial Reviews
"[Velvet Was the Night] is a noir with a heart of gold, and it's a narrative in which the empathy we feel for its characters ultimately reveals an important truth: That Moreno-Garcia is not only a talented storyteller but also an incredibly versatile one."-NPR
"An absolute flex . . . [Velvet Was the Night] left me marveling at what kind of sorceress Moreno-Garcia must be as she reworks genre after genre, weaving in Mexican history and culture, satisfying familiar cravings without resorting to mere pastiche. The most tantalizing suspense of all comes with wondering what she'll do next."-Slate
"Moreno-Garcia proves her prowess as a historical fiction powerhouse again."-BuzzFeed
"Immensely satisfying, refreshingly new and gloriously written . . . Moreno-Garcia mashes up Anglocentric genres with midcentury Mexican history, resulting in a brew flavored with love, heartbreak, violence, music and unsettling dread. . . . The gift of this book, and Moreno-Garcia's storytelling, is how it imbues this well-worn genre with added strength, grace and even musicality."-The New York Times Book Review
"An enthralling tale that's as fun as it is mysterious . . . The characters are fascinating, the tone lush and romantic, and it's all wrapped up in a mystery with twists and turns one likely won't see coming. . . . [Moreno-Garcia is] the sort of author whose works automatically end up on your ‘must-read' list."-USA Today
"The author's previous novel, Mexican Gothic, turned the screw on the traditional ghost story; here she gleefully pries hard-boiled noir from the cold, white hands of Chandler and Hammett."-Oprah Daily
"A delicious, twisted treat for lovers of noir. Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a masterful writer who pulls you into her dark world and never lets you go. From the suspenseful, slow-burn plot to the crisp, desperate characters, you will be obsessed."-Simone St. James, New York Times bestselling author of The Sun Down Motel
"A lush, magnificent trip into a world of danger and discovery. Not to be missed!"-S.A. Cosby, author of Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears
"A rich novel with an engrossing plot, distinctive characters, and a pleasing touch of romance. Readers won't be able to put it down."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Fans of Moreno-Garcia's other novels will relish this title, as will noir aficionados and readers who like stories about everymen and women rising to the occasion."-Library Journal (starred review)
"It's har...
"An absolute flex . . . [Velvet Was the Night] left me marveling at what kind of sorceress Moreno-Garcia must be as she reworks genre after genre, weaving in Mexican history and culture, satisfying familiar cravings without resorting to mere pastiche. The most tantalizing suspense of all comes with wondering what she'll do next."-Slate
"Moreno-Garcia proves her prowess as a historical fiction powerhouse again."-BuzzFeed
"Immensely satisfying, refreshingly new and gloriously written . . . Moreno-Garcia mashes up Anglocentric genres with midcentury Mexican history, resulting in a brew flavored with love, heartbreak, violence, music and unsettling dread. . . . The gift of this book, and Moreno-Garcia's storytelling, is how it imbues this well-worn genre with added strength, grace and even musicality."-The New York Times Book Review
"An enthralling tale that's as fun as it is mysterious . . . The characters are fascinating, the tone lush and romantic, and it's all wrapped up in a mystery with twists and turns one likely won't see coming. . . . [Moreno-Garcia is] the sort of author whose works automatically end up on your ‘must-read' list."-USA Today
"The author's previous novel, Mexican Gothic, turned the screw on the traditional ghost story; here she gleefully pries hard-boiled noir from the cold, white hands of Chandler and Hammett."-Oprah Daily
"A delicious, twisted treat for lovers of noir. Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a masterful writer who pulls you into her dark world and never lets you go. From the suspenseful, slow-burn plot to the crisp, desperate characters, you will be obsessed."-Simone St. James, New York Times bestselling author of The Sun Down Motel
"A lush, magnificent trip into a world of danger and discovery. Not to be missed!"-S.A. Cosby, author of Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears
"A rich novel with an engrossing plot, distinctive characters, and a pleasing touch of romance. Readers won't be able to put it down."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Fans of Moreno-Garcia's other novels will relish this title, as will noir aficionados and readers who like stories about everymen and women rising to the occasion."-Library Journal (starred review)
"It's har...
Readers Top Reviews
J. Fetzer
Nothing like Mexican Gothic. More like Roberto Bolano or other Latin American writers telling a historical fiction tale of their country's troubles - crooked and vicious police, "the disappeared", idealistic leftist students and artists, reactionary rich people, etc.
Mac6uffin
Over a hundred student protestors are killed in the El Halconazo (Corpus Christi Massacre) protesting against the government. Maite, a 30 year old secretary, though is hardly paying attention. She works her job, listens to her English records, and dreams of a man like in the romantic comic books she is ashamed of reading. Then her young neighbor across the hall asks her to watch her cat and disappears. Maite just wants to find her neighbor and get paid for watching the cat. Suddenly she is plunged into a world of student protestors, political unrest, communist agents, secret police, incriminating photos, wannabe revolutionaries, and a very young poor man who has nothing in his life so he works for the government as a thug beating up students and journalists named Elvis... because he likes Elvis records. Even though rock music is seen as a subversive element by the government. I really enjoyed Mexican Gothic, and while this isn't a spooky story like that one, it's a pretty gripping noir thriller about a time and place few Americans know about, even though it is right next door.
The TeachBonnie Brod
I'm about 30% into this book and I don't think I'll continue. For one thing, the characters are both unlikeable. El Elvis is a criminal but with a good heart? At least he thinks so. He can't afford to make a life selling records so he becomes a government-sponsored anti-communist enforcer. Maite is a whiner. And a thief. She steals from her friends, which is pretty unfriendly. And the story is almost all telling, no showing, which makes it even harder to sink into the story. I'd like to be swept up in 1970s Mexico, but it's not happening and I don't have the time or energy to fight for it. A pity it was so expensive.
Kathleen Geier
I liked Silvia Moreno-Garcia's first noir novel, Untamed Shore, very much and I absolutely adore this one. It features deeply believable characters who are also capable of surprising you, a powerful political subtext (Mexico's Dirty War), fascinating forays into pop culture (comic books, rock & roll), and stellar writing. Plus there's that gorgeous cover and a swell accompanying Spotify playlist. What a great, riveting summer read!
Shannon Phillips
This book is a departure from some of the author's previous work, it that it has no supernatural elements. But approached and judged as a noir, it is perfect. If you like cigarettes and rain and urban decay, stylish veneers that cover rotten framework and beautiful people who are just as rotten at the core, plus a few antiheroes that are maybe struggling to hold on to *just one last piece* of any ideals they may once have held...caught up in a whirlwind of violence, mystery and crime...well, this is just a great book. The pacing is perfect, with plenty of action but also moments for the characters to reflect and to inhabit their (meticulously styled) worlds. It would work great as a film, but it doesn't neglect the power of prose. I read it in a day and was enthralled the whole time.
Short Excerpt Teaser
1
June 10, 1971
He didn't like beating people.
El Elvis realized this was ironic considering his line of work. Imagine that: a thug who wanted to hold his punches. Then again, life is full of such ironies. Consider Ritchie Valens, who was afraid of flying and died the first time he set foot on an airplane. Damn shame that, and the other dudes who died, Buddy Holly and "The Big Bopper" Richardson; they weren't half bad either. Or there was that playwright Aeschylus. He was afraid of being killed inside his house, and then he steps outside and wham, an eagle tosses a tortoise at him, cracking his head open. Murdered, right there in the most stupid way possible.
Often life doesn't make sense, and if Elvis had a motto it was that: life's a mess. That's probably why he loved music and factoids. They helped him construct a more organized world. When he wasn't listening to his records, he was poring over the dictionary, trying to memorize a new word, or plowing through one of those almanacs full of stats.
No, sir. Elvis wasn't like some of the perverts he worked with, who got excited smashing a dude's kidneys. He would have been happy solving crosswords and sipping coffee like their boss, El Mago, and maybe one day he would be an accomplished man of that sort, but for now there was work to be done, and this time Elvis was actually eager to beat a few motherf***ers up.
He hadn't developed a sudden taste for blood and cracking bones, no, but El Güero had been at him again.
El Güero was a policeman before he joined up with Elvis's group, and that made him cocky, made him want to throw his weight around. In practice being a poli meant shit because El Mago was the egalitarian sort who didn't care where his recruits came from-ex-cops, ex-military, porros, and juvenile delinquents were welcome as long as they worked right. But the thing was El Güero was twenty-five, getting long in the tooth, and that was making him anxious. Soon enough he'd have to move on.
The chief requirement of a Hawk was he needed to look like a student so he could inform on the activities of the annoying reds infesting the universities-Trotskos, Maoists, Espartacos; there were so many flavors of dissidents Elvis could barely keep track of all their organizations-and also, if necessary, f*** up a few of them. Sure, there were important fossils, like El Fish, who was twentyseven. But El Fish had been in one political shenanigan or another since he was a wee first-year chemistry student; he was as professional as porros got. El Güero hadn't achieved nearly as much. Elvis had just turned twenty-one, and El Güero felt the weight of his age and eyed the younger man with distrust, suspecting El Mago was going to pick El Elvis for a plum position.
Lately El Güero had been making snide remarks about how Elvis was a marshmallow, how he never went on any of the heavy assignments and instead he was picking locks and taking pictures. Elvis did what El Mago asked, and if El Mago wanted him to pick the locks and snap photos, who was Elvis to protest? But that didn't sway El Güero, who had taken to impugning Elvis's masculinity in veiled and irritating ways.
"A man who spends so much time running a comb through his hair isn't a man at all," El Güero would say. "The real Elvis Presley is a hip-shaking girlie-man."
"What you getting at?" Elvis asked, and El Güero smiled. "What you saying 'bout me now?"
"Didn't mean you, of course."
"Who'd you mean, then?"
"Presley, like I said. The f***ing weirdo you like so much."
"Presley's the king. Ain't nothin' wrong in liking him."
"Yankee garbage," El Güero said smugly.
And then, when it wasn't that, El Güero decided to use an assortment of nicknames to refer to Elvis, none of which were his code name. He had a fondness for calling him La Cucaracha, but also Tribilín, on account of his teeth.
In short, Elvis was in dire need of asserting himself, of showing his teammates that he wasn't no f***ing marshmallow. He wanted to get dirty, to put all those fighting techniques El Mago made them learn to good use, to show he was as capable as any of the other guys, especially as capable as El Güero, who looked like a f***ing extra in a Nazi movie, and Elvis had no doubts that his dear papa had been saying "heil" real merrily until he boarded a boat and moved his stupid family to Mexico. Yeah, El Güero looked like a Nazi and not any Nazi but a gigantic, beefy motherf***ing Nazi, and that's probably why he was so pissed off, because when you look like a blond Frankenstein it's not that easy to blend in with no one, and it's much better to be a shorter, slimmer, little dark-haired f***er like Elvis. That's why El Mago kept El Güe...
June 10, 1971
He didn't like beating people.
El Elvis realized this was ironic considering his line of work. Imagine that: a thug who wanted to hold his punches. Then again, life is full of such ironies. Consider Ritchie Valens, who was afraid of flying and died the first time he set foot on an airplane. Damn shame that, and the other dudes who died, Buddy Holly and "The Big Bopper" Richardson; they weren't half bad either. Or there was that playwright Aeschylus. He was afraid of being killed inside his house, and then he steps outside and wham, an eagle tosses a tortoise at him, cracking his head open. Murdered, right there in the most stupid way possible.
Often life doesn't make sense, and if Elvis had a motto it was that: life's a mess. That's probably why he loved music and factoids. They helped him construct a more organized world. When he wasn't listening to his records, he was poring over the dictionary, trying to memorize a new word, or plowing through one of those almanacs full of stats.
No, sir. Elvis wasn't like some of the perverts he worked with, who got excited smashing a dude's kidneys. He would have been happy solving crosswords and sipping coffee like their boss, El Mago, and maybe one day he would be an accomplished man of that sort, but for now there was work to be done, and this time Elvis was actually eager to beat a few motherf***ers up.
He hadn't developed a sudden taste for blood and cracking bones, no, but El Güero had been at him again.
El Güero was a policeman before he joined up with Elvis's group, and that made him cocky, made him want to throw his weight around. In practice being a poli meant shit because El Mago was the egalitarian sort who didn't care where his recruits came from-ex-cops, ex-military, porros, and juvenile delinquents were welcome as long as they worked right. But the thing was El Güero was twenty-five, getting long in the tooth, and that was making him anxious. Soon enough he'd have to move on.
The chief requirement of a Hawk was he needed to look like a student so he could inform on the activities of the annoying reds infesting the universities-Trotskos, Maoists, Espartacos; there were so many flavors of dissidents Elvis could barely keep track of all their organizations-and also, if necessary, f*** up a few of them. Sure, there were important fossils, like El Fish, who was twentyseven. But El Fish had been in one political shenanigan or another since he was a wee first-year chemistry student; he was as professional as porros got. El Güero hadn't achieved nearly as much. Elvis had just turned twenty-one, and El Güero felt the weight of his age and eyed the younger man with distrust, suspecting El Mago was going to pick El Elvis for a plum position.
Lately El Güero had been making snide remarks about how Elvis was a marshmallow, how he never went on any of the heavy assignments and instead he was picking locks and taking pictures. Elvis did what El Mago asked, and if El Mago wanted him to pick the locks and snap photos, who was Elvis to protest? But that didn't sway El Güero, who had taken to impugning Elvis's masculinity in veiled and irritating ways.
"A man who spends so much time running a comb through his hair isn't a man at all," El Güero would say. "The real Elvis Presley is a hip-shaking girlie-man."
"What you getting at?" Elvis asked, and El Güero smiled. "What you saying 'bout me now?"
"Didn't mean you, of course."
"Who'd you mean, then?"
"Presley, like I said. The f***ing weirdo you like so much."
"Presley's the king. Ain't nothin' wrong in liking him."
"Yankee garbage," El Güero said smugly.
And then, when it wasn't that, El Güero decided to use an assortment of nicknames to refer to Elvis, none of which were his code name. He had a fondness for calling him La Cucaracha, but also Tribilín, on account of his teeth.
In short, Elvis was in dire need of asserting himself, of showing his teammates that he wasn't no f***ing marshmallow. He wanted to get dirty, to put all those fighting techniques El Mago made them learn to good use, to show he was as capable as any of the other guys, especially as capable as El Güero, who looked like a f***ing extra in a Nazi movie, and Elvis had no doubts that his dear papa had been saying "heil" real merrily until he boarded a boat and moved his stupid family to Mexico. Yeah, El Güero looked like a Nazi and not any Nazi but a gigantic, beefy motherf***ing Nazi, and that's probably why he was so pissed off, because when you look like a blond Frankenstein it's not that easy to blend in with no one, and it's much better to be a shorter, slimmer, little dark-haired f***er like Elvis. That's why El Mago kept El Güe...
