Velvet Was The Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Silvia Moreno-Garcia again proves that she is a master with a pen and can weave compelling stories no matter the genre. Velvet Was The Night is a noir crime novel which means that it’s a gritty detective story with flawed main characters who live rather bleak lives in a city/country rife with political corruption.

Moral of the story: if your neighbor finally introduces herself after six months and immediately asks you to watch her cat for two days, it’s probably best to decline lest you find yourself encountering hitmen and corrupt government officials while trying to solve her disappearance so you can get paid.

I received a review copy from the publisher for consideration. This does not affect neither my opinion of the book nor the content of my review. I have since purchased a finished copy (picture above).

About Velvet Was The Night

Book Description

Reading Stats

Publisher: Del Rey •  Release Date: August 17, 2021 •  Pages: 289
Age Range: Adult • Genre: Noir/Historical Fiction • Format: eARC •  Source: Netgalley

Mexico in the 1970s is a dangerous country, even for Maite, a secretary who spends her life seeking the romance found in cheap comic books and ignoring the activists protesting around the city. When her next-door neighbor, the beautiful art student 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.

Mexico in the 1970s is a politically fraught land, even for Elvis, a goon with a passion for rock ’n’ roll who knows more about kidney-smashing than intrigue. When Elvis is assigned to find Leonora, he begins a blood-soaked search for the woman—and his soul.

Swirling in parallel trajectories, Maite and Elvis attempt to discover the truth behind Leonora’s disappearance, encountering hitmen, government agents, and Russian spies. Because Mexico in the 1970s is a noir where life is cheap and the price of truth is high.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic comes a simmering historical noir about a daydreaming secretary, a lonesome enforcer, and the mystery of the missing woman they’re both desperate to find.

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Representation

latinx representation

Content Warnings

blood & gore depiction, death, gun violence, missing person, Physical injuries, stabbing, torture

My Review of Velvet Was The Night

Silvia Moreno-Garcia again proves that she is a master with a pen and can weave compelling stories no matter the genre. Velvet Was The Night is a noir crime novel which means that it’s a gritty detective story with flawed main characters who live rather bleak lives in a city/country rife with political corruption.

There are moments of the book where the third-person narration reads like a narrator in a gritty noir film, coming alive on the page in my mind. Moreno-Garcia’s writing transports the reader to a different time and place with evocative writing that isn’t cumbersome to read.

As with some of her other works of literary fiction, the pace is slow and takes some time for the plot to develop and make itself known to the reader. While I found my mind wandering during the first quarter of the book, the book was insidiously sinking its teeth into me and suddenly I couldn’t put the book down. There’s a lot of character information shared in the narrative, pages and pages of various tidbits that don’t appear to have any meaning but readers who pay attention are rewarded when they begin to piece together the mystery.

With dual POVs and antiheroes conducting their own investigations in parallel, at times I struggled to keep track of which information was revealed by which character. That said, I really enjoyed the framing of the narrative with Elvis and Maite on “opposite” ends and coming to their own realizations about the world they live in. I hope they each find happiness because they deserve more than their sad existences.

Overall, Velvet Was The Night is a thought-provoking piece of noir fiction that explores political corruption through the mystery of a missing girl and the various groups who want to find her. Though the story is set in 1971 against the backdrop of real events of a student movement, it resonates today and (sadly) could happen today — making it an even more powerful read.

The Verdict

Recommended to readers who enjoy slow-burn plots and detective stories and noir crime novels.

Recommended if you enjoyed…

Let’s Chat!

No two readers experience a book in the same way; this was mine, but what about you?

💬  Have you read Velvet Was The Night yet? If so, what are your thoughts?

💬  Did I convince you to add this book to your TBR?

💬  What other noir crime novels would you recommend?

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