Velvet Was The Night
a delicious, twisted noir from the New York Times bestselling author of MEXICAN GOTHIC
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Velvet Was The Night
Narrated by:
Gisela Chípe
Buy Now for $26.99
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Narrated by:
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Gisela Chípe
About this listen
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.
'Such a captivating read' Goodreads review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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.
'I couldn't put it down' Goodreads review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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.
Velvet Was the Night: an edgy, simmering historical novel for lovers of smoky noirs and anti-heroes.©2021 Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Critic Reviews
Velvet Was the Night cements Silvia Moreno-Garcia's incredible versatility as an amazing writer who moves between genres effortlessly. A lush, magnificent trip into a world of danger and discovery. Not to be missed!
Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Velvet Was The Night is a treat to be savoured, a dizzying combination of American and Mexican Noir written in the most individual of voices.
Velvet Was the Night is a rollicking work of historical noir with a vivid sense of time and place and an unforgettable cast. Moreno-Garcia made me care deeply about her characters and their dangerous, riveting misadventures. This is a stylish, hard-boiled novel painted in shades of grey with a whole lot of heart.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia takes you into the gritty underworld noir of 1970s Mexico City with a propulsive read where no one and nothing is as it seems.
Velvet Was the Night is a delicious, twisted treat for lovers of noir. Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a who pulls you into her dark world and never lets you go. From the suspenseful, slow-burn plot to the crisp, desperate characters, you will be obsessed.
Moreno-Garcia keeps the suspense high and the action intense, all while sharing a bit of 1970s Mexican history in this perfectly pitched novel. Fans of Moreno-Garcia's other novels will relish this title, as will noir aficionados and readers who like stories about everymen - and women - rising to the occasion
Moreno-Garcia, the author of acclaimed and bestselling speculative novels, including Mexican Gothic (2020), returns to noir crime fiction with a winner that brings together a romance-fiction obsessed secretary and a lovelorn enforcer during the brutally suppressed student riots in 1970s Mexico City. Their stories of danger and passion run side by side in an enveloping narrative that is at once dark and bright. Despite their failings, readers will be rooting for them and hoping they find some happiness, and, maybe, even, each other.
It's hard to describe how much fun this novel is - Moreno-Garcia, whose Mexican Gothic (2020) gripped readers last year, proves to be just as good at noir as she is at horror. The novel features memorable characters, taut pacing, an intricate plot, and antiheroes you can't help but root for. A noir masterpiece.
A rich novel with an engrossing plot, distinctive characters, and a pleasing touch of romance. Readers won't be able to put it down.
A chameleon writer with incredible writing skills
A genre-jumping wizard, one of the most exciting and necessary authors writing today
You'll be pulled into the tale with spies, romance, danger and rock 'n' roll
Sexy and simmering
Pacy enough to keep you hooked - as it reaches its climax, so will your heart rate
Noir cool, recommended
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Brilliant fun
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When I love a book, I find that it’s so much harder to write about it because the words I sometimes have is just an inhuman garble of words which culminates in a PLEASE READ THIS BOOK. I can go for hours about books that I dislike, but for books like these it takes just a little bit of extra effort to bring back coherency, rein in the emotion and articulate myself well.
I adored the characters of Maite and Elvis and felt their desperation and loneliness seep through the pages and touch a similar yearning within myself. Neither Maite and Elvis are where they thought they’d end up and they seem to just be going through the motions of a never-ending life, trying to find some sparks of serotonin wherever they can. They lose themselves in selected choices of escapism – which as bookworms we are innately in touch with this concept. Music is such a form of connection between the two stories, and I encourage you to take a listen to the Velvet Was the Night playlist that was put together for this purpose.
Looking at Maite it looked like I was staring into a mirror (with the exception of a compulsion to steal) – even down to one story that Maite told of a workplace experience:
“… but the fact that she had to waste half an hour of her lunchtime standing in line and paying for a pair of socks irritated her.”
I, too, have had to go and purchase some socks for a boss on my lunchbreak – as soon as I read this, the kinship was cemented and I was rooting for her from then on. Although, I do love cats and I would have moved Leonora’s cat in with me immediately and would have never let it go.
Elvis touched a deep part of sorrow and loneliness in my core and although he is, what you would call, an anti-hero – I kept wishing for him to get all the good in the world. In a world where we’re all just trying to do our best, you can see him trying.
Velvet was the Night is told by dual POV’s and they are entwined so well, as both Maite and Elvis are on the trail of Leonora (for similar but differing reasons). I never felt lost as to whose story we were hearing as they both had their own individual voices firmly created and the switching between them was just so natural.
“Often life doesn’t make sense, and if Elvis had a motto it was that: life’s a mess”
Moreno-Garcia has a knack for writing Noir’s (PLEASE READ UNTAMED SHORE IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY) and I am desperately hoping that there is another one in her future, because I will absolutely devour that one too.
Smooth Noir - Well Written
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