Who Killed Palomino Molero?

Who Killed Palomino Molero? (1987) is another entertaining literary thriller from Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa. As with all of his novels, Llosa does a great job of creating a sense of time and place, this time the 1950s in a rural town in northern Peru that is located near a military base.  A young soldier, Palomino Molero, known for his singing is brutally murdered and the savvy Lieutenant Silva of the civil guard and his young protege Litma must try to solve this murder mystery despite a lack of support from the commander of the local military base. Silva has an obsession with a Rubenesque proprietor of the local cafe and wife of a fisherman. Litma is obsessed with the case and has no outlet like Silva. A thrilling and confounding mystery story unfolds. The characterizations and plot are masterfully rendered. This book doesn't have the epic sweep of novels like Feast of the Goat or Aunt Julia and the Scripwriter, but is the predecessor to another great detective story from Llosa, Death in the Andes (1996), which also has a pairing of a grizzled veteran detective, suspiciously named Litma (could it be the same from the earlier novel?) and a love struck younger protege.