[3] According to an article Solares wrote for La Jornada, during his teenage years he briefly had Rafael Guillén Vicente (Subcomandante Marcos, according to the Mexican authorities) as a substitute history teacher.
Throughout the book, the reader is introduced to one corrupt character after another, from cops who take payments to stay quiet to the alcoholic priest, whose knowledge of the truth is deteriorating his very soul.
[8] Solares' first novel, The Black Minutes (Spanish: Los minutos negros) is a crime fiction thriller that, according to José Agustín, awakens memories of Rafael Bernal's El complot mongol[9] while a book review published at The New York Times by Larry Rohter found it reminiscent of Roberto Bolaño's 2666 or Paco Ignacio Taibo II's detective stories; claiming that "he employs some flourishes that would seem to situate him in the postmodernist camp, including the occasional surrealistic episodes and his habit of mixing real and fictional characters.
"[10] In an interview with The Times, Junot Díaz expressed that The Black Minutes "is Latin American fiction at its pulpy phantasmagorical finest, [..] a literary masterpiece masquerading as a police procedural and nothing else I’ve read this year comes close.
However, by setting this is a fictional Mexican town, the two detectives must deal with corruption around every corner- men serving time for crimes they have not committed (how René Luz de Dios Lopez was framed for the murder of the young girls as “The Jackal”) and members of the cartel truly running the show (how Cabrera was nervous when he realized he confiscated a pistol from the cartel boss’s son).