The Night Will Be Long

December 6, 2021
This intelligent police procedural from Gamboa (Necropolis) refracts decades of turbulent Colombian history through the experiences of dramatically drawn characters. When freelance journalist Julieta Lezama travels to Tierradentro in southern Colombia to investigate a fatal firefight, she finds the site wiped clean of evidence and the local authorities claiming ignorance of the incident. Working with Bogotá prosecutor general Edilson Jutsiñamuy, Julieta traces a trail of clues to two evangelical Christian churches active in the country, New Jerusalem and the Assembly of God, and the long-term animus between their pastors, Fritz Almayer and Fabinho Henriquez. Her probing elicits suspicions—Almayer’s record is “cleaner than a porcelain Christ,” but it only goes back 15 years; Brazilian Henriquez also operates gold mines and retains armed security—while excavating the country’s myriad social and political upheavals of the late 20th century, including the rise of the FARC revolutionary guerrilla group, the surge of paramilitary forces and gangsterism, the onslaught of kidnappings and disappearances, and incidents that emphasize the gross disparity in means between the wealthy and the poor. The characters relate their personal histories at length, which, though narratively intrusive, adds depth to the experiences they describe. It adds up to a colorful story with solid grounding in historical detail.

October 15, 2021
In a remote stretch of southwestern Colombia, Bogota-based journalist Julieta Lezama investigates an ultraviolent confrontation that officials pretend never happened. Before mysteriously disappearing, an orphaned 14-year-old boy who witnessed the clash tells the 40-ish, trash-talking Julieta how the confrontation ended with a black-attired figure emerging from a bazooka-ed Hummer and escaping in a helicopter. Everyone else in town claims they didn't see or hear anything. All evidence of the confrontation is cleared away. With her assistant, Johana, a veteran of the FARC guerrilla group, Julieta determines that a simmering Mafia-like conflict between a Pentecostal church and an evangelical one had something to do with the roadside drama. The story leads Julieta to French Guiana and Brazil and intense one-on-ones with the churches' corrupt pastors--who, for all their dark edges, win her over with their charisma. Each of them gets to tell his anguished story in long, italicized sections that touch on the "perverse republic" that is Colombia. "When a person screams into the darkness, what reply is possible?" one of them asks. For all that, the book is lifted by its cutting humor, which takes on a dreamy, almost surreal quality. The deeper Julieta gets into the case, the more she drinks, happily aware of what she's doing. For the prosecutor she's working with, the more bodies pile up, the giddier he gets in urging her on. Gamboa can go so deep into a character, such as a pastor obsessed with gold, that he loses the thread of the main narrative. But the book never loses the spark of originality. An absorbing--at times almost too absorbing--mystery by a notable Colombian author.

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