Velvet Was the Night is the second novel written by Silvia Moreno-Garcia that I have read, the first being Mexican Gothic, which I reviewed in May. I like Mexican Gothic better, despite the strange turn it takes towards the end, because I prefer gothic over noir; however, I still found Velvet Was the Night to be an engrossing read.

Velvet Was the Night is framed around real-life events in Mexico during the 1960s and 1970s when the government was cracking down on communism in Mexico and suppressing dissidents, which included university students. The novel is set in 1971, when a group of student protestors were attacked by a group called The Hawks (Los Halcones), a group that was funded and organized by the Mexican government and trained with the support of the CIA.

The novel is told in the alternating perspectives of two protagonists. The first is Elvis, a 21-year-old man who is a member of The Hawks. Elvis is not his real name, but a nickname he adopted because he loves Elvis. Elvis does not like beating people up; he takes part in the attack against the student protestors, but his job is to intimidate journalists and destroy any footage that they have of the attack. Elvis is a good guy who got caught up with The Hawks because he is poor and uneducated and does not have a lot of options.

The second protagonist is Maite, a plain 30-year-old “spinster” who works as a secretary at a law firm. Maite is addicted to records and romantic comic books. She does not pay attention to the news, so she has no idea what is going on in the world around her, including the attack against the students. She gets roped into cat-sitting for her neighbour who lives across the hall from her apartment, the beautiful Leonora, but then Leonora disappears, and Maite learns that different groups of people (The Hawks, the KGB, the Mexican secret police) are after Leonora because she is in possession of some damaging photographs. Maite starts looking for Leonora, at first because she does not want to be responsible for Leonora’s cat anymore and because she wants the money Leonora owes her for cat-sitting, then because she starts to feel like she is a character in one of her romance comics.

I think I am generally an empathetic person who can understand why people behave the way they do, but I really had a hard time empathizing with Maite and I think she is the weakest link of Velvet Was the Night. She is a bitter person who I think would be unpleasant to be around, but I mostly could not stand her because, even though she is a pet-sitter, she does not like animals, and she is not very nice towards Leonora’s cat. Not liking animals, or at least not respecting that pets are living creatures that need to be cared for, automatically puts you on my shit list.

Elvis is the more interesting character and the one that seems to grow throughout the course of the novel as he becomes disillusioned with his role with The Hawks. Elvis is tasked by his boss, El Mago, to look for Leonora and the photographs. Elvis ends up tailing Maite because of her connection of Leonora and starts to become a little obsessed with her (mainly because of her taste in music; he does not know anything about her personality at this point). Elvis and Maite’s paths cross throughout the novel, and it becomes a game of “will they or won’t they”, which is too bad for Elvis as I think he deserves better.

There is not much in the way of mystery in Velvet Was the Night. I do not know much about the noir genre, so I am not sure if the intention is for the reader to know more about what is going on than the characters. That was certainly the case with this novel, where as the reader all you can do is read as the characters stumble towards danger and wait for the other shoe to drop, so to speak. Still, Velvet Was the Night is an intriguing novel with a good ending.