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Hector Belascoarán Shayne

kevinburtonsmith

Created by Paco Ignacio Taibo II
(1949- )

“It was a joke. just one hell of a big joke. Thinking that he could be a detective in Mexico. It was crazy.”
–Hector ponders his chosen profession in An Easy Thing

Mexico City’s one-eyed HECTOR BELASCOARÁN SHAYNE (his mother was an Irish folksinger, and his father was a Basque nationalist) is a rather philosophical gumshoe. He shares his office with an upholsterer, a plumber and a sewage engineer, all of whom seem to have differing political views, and aren’t exactly shy about expressing themselves. Hector fits right in. Moody, cynical, fatalistic, and contrary to a fault, he refuses to be pinned down by anyone else’s terms, be it “leftist,” “believer,” “radical or anything else.

He even rejects being called a private investigator, preferring instead to himself instead as an “independent detective” in The Uncomfortable Dead (2006).

But there’s no doubt that Hector is an interesting addition to the genre, offering a fresh setting and a at-times shape-shifting perspective that’s worlds away from the standard P.I. novel, with some definitely surreal touches, rumbling throughout the series. In one novel, he’s even killed off, only to return in the next one, Return To The Same City, with no apologies from Taibo, although he does offer an explanation of sorts:

“His appearance in these pages is therefore an act of magic. White magic perhaps, but magic that is irrational and disrespectful toward the occupation of writing a mystery series. … As always, it must be said that the story told here belongs to the terrain of absolute fiction, although Mexico is the same and belongs to the terrain of surprising reality.”

Turns out too many readers complained that Hector had been killed off, and the author realized he had a few stories about Hector to tell.

As in “Holy Sherlock, Batman!”

Not that Hector comes back all hale and hearty–in the course of the series he loses an eye, and in an afterword to the English language edition of Frontera Dreams, Taibo provides a sketch of Shayner, detailing all the scars on his bullet-riddled body.

The latest (final?) novel in the series, The Uncomfortable Dead (2006), may be the most surreal and political book yet, with Mexico City fully justifying its rep as “the craziest and most upside-down city on the planet.” Co-written with Subcomandante Marcos (they alternate chapters), a real-life spokesperson for Mexico’s Zapatista movement, it swings between a complex case involving Hector, Elías Contreras, a detective for the Zapatista National Liberation Army, a government-backed murderer and assorted ghosts–one of whom may be leaving arguments for the rights of indigenous peoples and rants against globalization and privatization on Hectoir’s answering machine. Of course, this being typical Taibo, the dead just don’t stay dead, characters occasionally step outside of the book to discuss their progress and co-author Marcos even writes himself into the story. But the strangest thing about this unapologetic, politically charged story was that it was actually nominated for a Shamus in 2007.

Not that it moved the needle any large amount in this country. But back home in Mexico, the books have (so far) inspired at least five film adaptations.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Author, journalist, historian, and political activist Paco Ignacio Taibo, II was born in Spain, but lives in Mexico. He’s had severalbooks published; but may be best known outside of Mexico for his mystery series with Shayne. In fact, he’s one of the most popular Mexican crime writers around these days. He’s also one of the major forces behind the International Crime Writers Association’s “Semana Negra” held every summer in Gijon, Spain, a ten-day festival that brings together writers of the “novela negra” from around the world.

TRUE CONFESSIONS

UNDER OATH

NOVELS

SHORT STORIES

FILMS

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Thanks to Fr. John Woolley for not so much naming names, as telling me where to put them.

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