Dead Men Cast No Shadows

Volume 3 of The Managua Trilogy, following The Sky Weeps for Me and No One Weeps for Me Now. Exiled to Honduras, Inspector Dolores Morales undertakes a dangerous journey back into Nicaragua, hunted by agents of the secret police whose commissioner, with ruthless cynicism and the divinatory advice of his mother, serves as enabler-in-chief of the country's deranged politics. Desperate to reunite with his ailing main squeeze, Morales soon finds himself entangled by other concerns: a massive peaceful student protest erupts throughout Managua, only to be suppressed with extreme prejudice by police and paramilitary forces. Gradually a murky network is revealed, full of secrets, betrayals and dark maneuvers that Inspector Morales will have to face. Even as the 2018 massacre of 400 students is skillfully dramatized, and a portrait painted unsparingly of a society shaped by tyranny, corruption, poverty and misery, Ramirez never loses sight of the humanity of Nicaragua's people and their hopes.--Bruce