Silver Nitrate, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey)
Silvia Moreno-Garcia is an amazing writer, bringing together
sympathetic (if wonderfully weird) characters, pitch-perfect tropes, and Mexican
settings. I adore some of her books more than others, but they’re all really
good reads. I didn’t connect immediately with Silver Nitrate but when it
grabbed me, it didn’t let go until the breathless finish.
Here, Moreno-Garcia throws together an unlikely pair of
lifelong friends (ungainly sound editor Montserrat and tarnished but swoon-worthy
soap-opera star Tristán), the 1930s Mexican horror movie industry, Nazi white
supremacist obsession with the occult, and magic ignited by movies made with highly
flammable silver nitrate film stock. And it all works. Brilliantly.
Just about the time Montserrat finds herself on the way out
of a job in a 1990s Mexico City film studio, Tristán takes up with his elderly
neighbor, reclusive legendary horror cult director, Abel. Abel convinces the
two friends to help him finish a movie that was imbued with magic by a Nazi
occultist. Intrigued although skeptical of the claims of the cult’s supernatural
powers, Montserrat and Tristán agree. This is when things begin, slowly but
with gathering speed, to go seriously pear-shaped.
Glimpses into the lower echelons of the film industry, peeks
into a subgenre I never knew existed (Mexican horror films), and two compelling
characters carried me along as hints and nuances deepened and formed ever more
horrific connections. By the time Tristán started seeing the ghost of his dead
girlfriend, it was clear we “weren’t in Kansas anymore.” As with her other
works, Moreno-Garcia’s prose is strong and vivid, and she handles relationships
as well as thriller-paced action with consummate skill.
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