Book Review: Death in Central America
Death in Central America. Jack Hafferkamp. Independently Published, December 4, 2019, Trade Paperback and E-book, 315 pages.
Reviewed by Lisa Lickel.
Former arts reporter for the Chicago Daily News and creative writing teacher Jack Hafferkamp’s latest novel, Death in Central America, takes place in Guatemala and post-Noriega Panama of the 1990s when civil war is still very ugly, and the political situation with the U.S. is worse.
The novel begins close to the end of the story, so the reader understands much of what happened. The journey of the book is learning how a particular disaster unfolds. We are introduced to the main players, and, since we readers know who survives, I found myself following them superficially through the first third of the book. The first three-quarters of the book felt like paging through a travel guide. A group of journalists has been invited to Central America by the governments of Guatemala and Panama to boost tourism after a ferocious civil war devastated the economy.
It’s a large cast. I like large casts, but knowing that most people don’t make it to the end makes it a little harder to read about them. The group is relatively typical: two gay couples, the guy who knows what’s really going on, and the expendable ones who still try to manage life interrupted back home. There’s the classic jerk who’s something more, the young naïve guy who acts as the question-and-answer fall guy, an expat as the host, and a native woman as the local guide in Guatemala. They are built up with lives and personalities and then dropped when the group moves on. In Guatemala, the tourism representatives at least try to hide the unrest from tourists. In Panama, the journalists are not so lucky.
Discouraging and distinctly unwelcoming events happen, told through lots of description, food, developing relationships, sexual situations, and a little shame on entitled gringos. A fight and accidental death end the group’s visit to Guatemala. In Panama, they pick up a new guide with curious connections. Eventually, the horror builds to the last days of their junket when the truth behind their invitation to write about ecotourism in a ravaged nation during dangerous times is revealed, and a covert mission goes way off track.
One of the characters describes their situation well: “So how do we write nice travel stories about a beautiful place where there is enough street thuggery that you need an armed guard to take in the sights, and then, on a sunny day, with no warning, an arrogant guy in a uniform, holding a gun, can just pull you over and scare the shit out of you because of his inflated sense of entitlement?”
Told in head-hopping fashion, so the reader gets to know what everybody is thinking, the stakes go from once-beautiful war-torn countries wishing for good advertising to the survival of the fittest. The author's background in writing adult lit is evident in the sensual descriptions of food and scenery, even the passionate political dialog, innuendo, and gratuitous sex. Violence is recounted in near unrelenting fashion throughout the last few chapters, and the switch back to a member of the party returned early to the U.S. brings it all home in a journalistic twist. I recommend Death in Central America for those who appreciate Central America, want to delve more into its recent past, and aren't bothered by blood.