Time of the Flies

This inventive outing from Argentine writer Piñeiro (Elena Knows) infuses a gripping crime plot with feminist theory. After Inés completes a 15-year prison sentence for murdering her now ex-husband’s lover, she opens a business with fellow ex-con and friend Manca, offering fumigation and private investigation services for women in Buenos Aires (its name, FFF, stands for “flies, females, and fumigation”). One year later, a client by the name of Ms. Bonar implores Inés to illegally sell her professional grade poison for her own revenge scheme. When Inés realizes the money would be enough to treat the lump growing in Manca’s breast, she agrees. But Manca doesn’t trust Bonar, and after she discovers Bonar’s ties to Inés’s estranged daughter, Laura, she worries Inés is being set up. Piñeiro cleverly juxtaposes Inés’s ruminations on various species of flies (“the only insects I refuse to touch”) with passages from feminist writers such as Rebecca Solnit (“I just think that if we noticed that women are, on the whole, radically less violent, we might be able to theorise where violence comes from and what we can do about it a lot more productively”). This propulsive novel lays bare the struggles of living under patriarchy. (Aug.)