Plenty of crime novels open with a corpse. This one opens with a man studying his own face, counting the silver creeping into his hair, wondering how many good years his looks have left. He is Ulises, a small-time swindler in 1943 Mexico City who courts lonely women by mail and empties their bank accounts. Broke after a job collapsed, he picks his next target by the price of the train fare. The ticket to a foggy mountain town in Veracruz costs less, so Veracruz wins. With that one shabby, telling decision, The Intrigue by Silvia Moreno-Garcia gets its claws in you.
The Setup: A Deal No Sensible Person Would Sign
Ulises turns up at a fading boardinghouse expecting an easy mark. He finds Perla Inclán instead: a coffee heiress turned landlady with a rigid back, a silver crucifix, and a temper kept on a tight rein. He also finds Inés, Perla’s niece, treated as unpaid help and guarded like contraband. Inés reads him inside a day. Rather than warn her aunt, she names her terms: cut me in, and I will help you land her.
From there the book becomes a three-cornered contest of hunger and arithmetic, where a polite supper conceals a ledger and every gallant line carries a price tag. Moreno-Garcia keeps the scheme’s gears tight and the motives cloudy. Out of respect for the surprises, I will say only this: Perla is no gullible old maid, and a plan this tidy was never built to stay tidy.
A Town Called Drowned Pig
Half the pleasure sits in the setting. Puerco Ahogado, which translates to “Drowned Pig,” is invented, though readers who know Xalapa will spot its skeleton: a settlement clinging to a mountainside under endless drizzle, heavy with orchids, coffee, and rumor. Moreno-Garcia writes the fog as a living thing, veiling cobblestones and softening the edges of a house full of moth-eaten grandeur. The Second World War hums in the background through blackout drills and newspaper dread, and the era comes alive in small, exact touches: cinema afternoons, danzón at the dance hall, film stars traded like currency in a baker’s chatter. It is period writing that never reads like a museum plaque.
The Cast: Nobody Here Is Playing Fair
The three leads are the real machinery of The Intrigue by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and each one resists easy sympathy:
- Ulises is a swindler who is not much good at swindling. He inherited his father’s fine manners and languages but not the killer instinct, and that gap between his self-image and his talent gives him a sad, funny, human quality.
- Perla is the book’s masterstroke. Prim, devout, and quietly furious, she carries the wounds of a woman who spent her best years nursing others while the world moved on. Underestimate her at your peril.
- Inés is the beating heart of it. Sharp-tongued, restless, and boxed in by a town that treats an out-of-wedlock birth as a permanent sentence, she wants out by any means available.
Their shifting alliances, who trusts whom, who wants whom, generate more suspense than any chase scene could.
Prose That Smells of Coffee and Damp Stone
Moreno-Garcia’s writing is elegant without turning precious. She favors slow, sensory scenes, dry wit, and lines that turn a knife with quiet precision. One phrase, describing Perla’s longing as a “putrefied wound,” has stayed with me for days. Readers who came to her through Mexican Gothic will find the same command of mood, minus the supernatural. The point of view slides between all three principals, so we watch each character misjudge the others, which is where much of the book’s grim comedy lives.
What Works Beautifully
- The atmosphere never lets up. You can feel the wet air and hear the drip of the chipichipi rain.
- Perla, as a character, is worth the price of admission on her own.
- The social observation is precise and unforced, especially the cage that respectability builds around women of the period.
- The dark humor keeps a bleak premise from curdling into misery.
Where the Seams Show
An honest reader should note the softer spots, because this is a very good book rather than a flawless one:
- The slow burn is properly slow. Anyone expecting a fast, twisty thriller should reset their expectations toward a character study with a criminal pulse.
- The bond between Ulises and Inés, which the plot leans on heavily, could have used more room to grow. At times the attraction is asserted more than earned.
- Inés’s practical role in the con gets less page time than her situation deserves, and a few threads resolve faster than the careful buildup promised.
- Ulises’s limited cunning is a deliberate choice, yet readers hoping for a dazzling criminal mastermind may feel shortchanged.
None of these sink the book. They simply keep it from perfection.
Costumbrista Meets Noir
What lifts The Intrigue by Silvia Moreno-Garcia above a standard period crime story is its literary DNA. In a closing note, Moreno-Garcia explains her aim to fuse the costumbrista tradition, those Mexican novels obsessed with local manners and social rules, with the moral rot of classic noir. The result earns its frequent comparisons to James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler, filtered through a distinctly Mexican, distinctly female lens. This is a crime story about money, marriage, and the narrow exits available to women who were never handed keys of their own.
Where It Sits in Her Bookshelf
Worth clearing up: this is a standalone, not part of a series, so you can start here with no homework. It does belong to a loose family of Moreno-Garcia noirs, alongside Untamed Shore and Velvet Was the Night, and it sits near her other historical and speculative work: Mexican Gothic, Silver Nitrate, Gods of Jade and Shadow, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, The Seventh Veil of Salome, and The Bewitching. Fans of her range will feel right at home.
If You Loved This, Read Next
- Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, for more of her period Mexican noir
- Untamed Shore by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, a coming-of-age crime story on the Baja coast
- The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith, for charm as a criminal instrument
- The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain, for lean, sweaty American noir
- The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters, for a boardinghouse, forbidden desire, and crime
- Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham, for a grifter’s slow slide into the dark
The Verdict
The Intrigue by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a stylish, sly, and quietly savage piece of historical crime fiction. It rewards patience rather than adrenaline, trading twists for character, and its portrait of Perla alone marks it as one of the author’s sharpest creations. The romance could run deeper and the pace will test thrill-seekers, but for readers who like their noir humid, morally slippery, and steeped in place, this is an easy recommendation. Pour something strong, settle in, and let the fog roll down the mountain.