Author Abraham Rodriguez delves into Barrio noir in “South by South Bronx”
A mysterious blond appears naked in the bed of an aimless man who has frequent blackouts. She’s got a pair of Manolo Blahniks, a secret and a gun.
This scenario would fit right in with the hardboiled detective novels from the 1950s, the ones starring cynical gumshoes like Mike Hammer or Philip Marlowe.
Instead, it’s the opening to Abraham Rodríguez’s new novel, “South by South Bronx” (Akashic Books, $15.95), which intersects concerns about terrorism, changes in the drug trade and gentrification with Hitchcockian double-crosses and a mountain of cash.
The novel, Rodríguez’s third, takes the Bronx-born writer’s longtime concerns about Puerto Rican identity and street-level realism and meshes them with the structure of a classic pulp fiction narrative.
“It wasn’t a conscious thing, ‘I’m going to do a mystery book,’” says Rodríguez, whose first novel, the gritty and lyrical “Spidertown,” was published in 1994.
“I always wanted to do something with a Puerto Rican cop, and I’m obsessed with the concept of dragging Puerto Ricans into Americana,” he adds over the phone from Northern California, where he began his book tour last week.
Tonight at 7, Rodríguez will be reading at Barnes & Noble in Tribeca, 97 Warren St. — the first of five book presentations in New York (see below).
“South by South Bronx” is divided into two narratives, set off by the use of different typefaces.
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