Bolaño 2666 Read-A-Long – Week 8

The Bolaño 2666 Read-A-Long is a twelve week read of 2666 with people who can’t face reading the tome on their own. There are about 8 of us who are reading this together.

If you like to join in, get your copy of 2666 and join us any time. You can find the full reading schedule in THIS POST.

Reading for Week 8

This week, we read the following

Section IV The Part About the Crimes (4 weeks)

8. Pages 497-568 (71 pages) April 23rd

Read until: “After they had eaten, as both of them stared out at the night through the windows…“

My summary (may contain spoilers)

More dead women, but I have the feeling many more are now being found along the road-side or a little while from the road, rather than in rubbish dumps. New killers, new modus operandi?

I also noticed how badly the police investigate the cases. Especially if they cannot identify a woman, they close the case rather quickly. On the other hand, the police were rather good at catching some car thieves and other criminals. They are just not really trying with these women, are they?

Klaus Haas, who is still in prison, argues that he cannot have committed these new murders since he’s locked away. But the police suggests he hires people to kill women, so it looks like he can’t be involved himself. When some rich women are killed, the killers are slaughtered in prison by some of the other prisoners. Haas sees it all happening and tells the authorities about it, but nothing is done.

We find out that many more men are killed than women, but that is quite normal in Mexico. The odd thing is that in Santa Teresa a much higher proportion of women are killed compared to the rest of the country.

Then the story moves to three forensic doctors who all work in Santa Teresa. There’s Emilio Garibay, the oldest and the second one is Juan Arredondo, who loves to go to foreign conventions about his topic of research. The third one is Rigoberto Frías who lives on his own and is a very quiet, dedicated worker with no hobbies.

This is followed by some really bad women’s jokes by police officers that are having a break in a road side café.

We also learn more about Lalo Cura, the boy that became a police officer. In his family tree, we find that Lalo is descended from a line of women, all called María Espósito, who get a daughter (by the same name) due to a rape (in almost all cases). Lalo is one of the very few men that descend from this line.

Discussion

I’m enjoying the story a bit more again. There are more things happening and I seem to see a pattern in the place where the women are dumped (i.e., from rubbish tips to road sides). It is also much more clear that the police don’t spend very much time on the murders. So, hopefully, we’re getting some further progress in the next section.

Haas seems to have a more prominent place in the story than I thought. I’m a bit suspicious about how he can tell on the killers in prison but not get punished for this himself. Is he just too unimportant? Or are people afraid of him?

Discussion questions

Did you notice the shift of where the bodies were left? Or am I imagining things?

What do you think Haas’ role is in the story? Is he really involved in the murders?

What do you think of this part of the story?

Next week (Week 9)

This week, we’ll read the following

Section IV The Part About the Crimes (4 weeks)

9. Pages 567-633 (66 pages) April 30st

Read until the end of this section.

What did you think of this week’s read?