The Tenth Circle

Hollywood violence is imported to Latin America in this bloody but oddly captivating novella chronicling the mother of all midlife crises. The first-person narrator, twice-divorced Argentinian Alfredo Romero, is approaching 50. For four years, Alfredo has been involved in a torrid love affair with Griselda Antonutti, the wife of his best friend and business partner, Antonio. One night, without provocation, and seemingly for kicks, Alfredo slams a shovel into the back of Antonio's head. The newly widowed Griselda and Alfredo find the killing exciting, and Griselda promptly attacks a nosy neighbor with a poker while Alfredo shoots an unlucky delivery boy. Soon Alfredo is murdering everyone in sight, while confiding to the reader, ""Believe me, it's fascinating to go around killing people."" It's plain things are going to turn out badly, and although Alfredo and Griselda attempt to escape to Paraguay, the plot spirals down to who-kills-whom-first. Novelist and journalist Giardinelli has produced a kind of Natural Born Killers crossed with Peyton Place, with the older protagonists providing a deliciously disturbing twist to the sex and violence. Why should teenagers have all the fun? Labinger's translation is adequate, although her occasional reliance on clich s (""He could sell ice to an Eskimo,"" ""Off we went, burning rubber"") can be distracting. Although Giardinelli is not well known in this country, his previous novel, Sultry Moon, was a bestseller in Argentina, Russia, Germany and Brazil, and won Mexico's National Book Award when it was published there in 1983. If presented to readers as the clever, tongue-in-cheek thriller it is, his latest has the potential to attract wider audiences in the U.S. (Nov.)