I am a sucker for any books to do with crimes so this one was intriguing for me. Piglia follows a bank from in Argentina in 1965. It is important to note that this robbery was down not by one person, but four men. These men got away with the crime and headed to a hideout where they took drugs and drank alcohol to their hearts content. Just as they were feeling like everything was going their way, their hideout was raided and from there we read about the infamous shootout.

The novel was predictable, a true crime story almost always is. The main point of the novel was the legendary raid of the hideout of these 4 robbers. Piglia made a predictable story feel alive with his words. The energy of the book made it easy for me to follow along and one thing that was really interesting to me was the “twins” who were apart of this robbery group. Their names were Dorda and Brignone and they were allegedly lovers. At least that is was is alluded in this book, but I researched a bit and Dorda’s daughter was actually quite upset by this because she did not want her father to be portrayed as a homosexual who does drugs. Back to the story, this crime duo reminded me of Bonnie and Clyde. I was seriously rooting for them to get away with this crime. Going back to Piglias writing, he uses comments from witnesses and pieces from the newspapers in his novel and what separates his novel from others about this story is that he describes each robber and their background and characteristics. He shows us what makes them different from others and why they would commit this crime.

Piglia humanizes the robbers,  which is something I have not seen before. I think he does this with most characters in the book, another example being the sex workers. Especially when Brignone was opening up to one.  When the sex worker betrayed Brignone, I shed a tear.

The psychotic nature of each robber is what makes them burn the money during the raid. I can see where they are coming from, almost from a place that means if they don’t get the money, no one will. It surprised me that this act caused more outrage than the shoot-out itself. So many people lot their lives, yet people are mad over paper??? It is interesting to see how money affects society and how much power it holds over people.

Question…

Why did Piglia go from the robbers, to the witnesses, to the newspaper excerpts, to pedestrians ? Why not follow just the robbers?