Velvet Was the Night
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Velvet Was the Night
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Narrated by:
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Gisela Chípe
About this listen
Mexico in the 1970s is a dangerous country, even for Maite, a secretary who spends her life seeking the romance found in cheap comic books and ignoring the activists protesting around the city. When her next-door neighbor, the beautiful art student Leonora, disappears under suspicious circumstances, Maite finds herself searching for the missing woman-and journeying deeper into Leonora's secret life of student radicals and dissidents.
Mexico in the 1970s is a politically fraught land, even for Elvis, a goon with a passion for rock 'n' roll who knows more about kidney-smashing than intrigue. When Elvis is assigned to find Leonora, he begins a blood-soaked search for the woman-and his soul.
Swirling in parallel trajectories, Maite and Elvis attempt to discover the truth behind Leonora's disappearance, encountering hitmen, government agents, and Russian spies. Because Mexico in the 1970s is a noir, where life is cheap and the price of truth is high.
Velvet Was the Night: an edgy, simmering historical novel for lovers of smoky noirs and anti-heroes.
What listeners say about Velvet Was the Night
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 11-12-2021
Noir cool, recommended
A daydreaming, romance novel-loving secretary and gang member are slowly drawn together as they each search for a missing girl. Mills and Boon meets Pulp Fiction against a backdrop of political unrest, violence and student repression in early 1970s Mexico. Quirky, clever and unique- great book.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 27-10-2021
Brilliant fun
The most fun I've had in ages. Brilliant writing. Great performance. Entertaining. I recommend it,
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Samantha
- 30-09-2021
Smooth Noir - Well Written
"Some people are made to be lonely"
When I love a book, I find that it’s so much harder to write about it because the words I sometimes have is just an inhuman garble of words which culminates in a PLEASE READ THIS BOOK. I can go for hours about books that I dislike, but for books like these it takes just a little bit of extra effort to bring back coherency, rein in the emotion and articulate myself well.
I adored the characters of Maite and Elvis and felt their desperation and loneliness seep through the pages and touch a similar yearning within myself. Neither Maite and Elvis are where they thought they’d end up and they seem to just be going through the motions of a never-ending life, trying to find some sparks of serotonin wherever they can. They lose themselves in selected choices of escapism – which as bookworms we are innately in touch with this concept. Music is such a form of connection between the two stories, and I encourage you to take a listen to the Velvet Was the Night playlist that was put together for this purpose.
Looking at Maite it looked like I was staring into a mirror (with the exception of a compulsion to steal) – even down to one story that Maite told of a workplace experience:
“… but the fact that she had to waste half an hour of her lunchtime standing in line and paying for a pair of socks irritated her.”
I, too, have had to go and purchase some socks for a boss on my lunchbreak – as soon as I read this, the kinship was cemented and I was rooting for her from then on. Although, I do love cats and I would have moved Leonora’s cat in with me immediately and would have never let it go.
Elvis touched a deep part of sorrow and loneliness in my core and although he is, what you would call, an anti-hero – I kept wishing for him to get all the good in the world. In a world where we’re all just trying to do our best, you can see him trying.
Velvet was the Night is told by dual POV’s and they are entwined so well, as both Maite and Elvis are on the trail of Leonora (for similar but differing reasons). I never felt lost as to whose story we were hearing as they both had their own individual voices firmly created and the switching between them was just so natural.
“Often life doesn’t make sense, and if Elvis had a motto it was that: life’s a mess”
Moreno-Garcia has a knack for writing Noir’s (PLEASE READ UNTAMED SHORE IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY) and I am desperately hoping that there is another one in her future, because I will absolutely devour that one too.
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