Thursday Night Widows

Near the start of Piñeiro's clever U.S. debut, which won Argentina's Clarin Prize for fiction and has been made into a film, the bodies of three well-to-do men—El Tano Scaglia, Martín Urovich and Gustavo Masotta—turn up in the Scaglias' swimming pool in Cascades Heights, a gated community outside Buenos Aires. The three men, along with Ronie Guevara, regularly had dinner on Thursday nights at one of their houses in this exclusive enclave. The search for the truth behind their deaths takes a backseat to the soap operaish goings-on of the Cascade Heights set, as seen in flashbacks largely through the eyes of Guevara's realtor wife, Virginia. Readers with an interest in contemporary Argentina will appreciate how this crime novel illuminates the hypocrisies of the country's upper classes after 9/11. (Jan.)