The Secret Grievances

Desiderio Vigil, a retired lieutenant from the force of the Havana's Criminal Police, faces up to a conscience case: a former classmate and friend of his sons-absents because of the exile, but present because of his yearning-had become a serial killer, a sort of "social purifier," a Vigilante which victimizes the dregs of society. The old officer decides to act by his own and channels his efforts into seeking him, accompanied by another former friend of those once-lads. It starts then a kind of three days' pedestrian road-movie, through which, in two different narrative levels that are both interspersed and complemented, they walk up and down half capital city. It is that 1996's Havana. The good old Faith in the future has already collapsed into a present of sad mists and uncertainties, as much for average people as for parasite lumpenproletariat. The old times of faith in the future are already water gone under the bridge and between nostalgia and sarcasms are knitted the atmospheres of this story. It is a novel in which either social and psychological elements demand its shares of police ingredient, but in which the suspense factor goes slithering underground, to burst on the surface, violent and unexpected, toward the end of the work.