‘I had the most important nightmare of my life so far while traveling in a bus down a highway flanked with pine trees.  I haven’t been able to figure out what it means, at least not entirely,
    It was nighttime, but I couldn’t sleep. Every time I started to nod off, the headlights of oncoming cars or the jolting of the bus jarred me awake.  I knew I was finally asleep when I couldn’t hear the engine drone anymore and the headlights turned soft and blue and stopped bothering me.
    I was having a pleasant dream, one that was even, in certain respects,  a musical one, when I sensed that a sarcastic person, someone who knew me fairly well, had moved into the seat behind me.  The visitor waited until I was used to his presence; then he uncrossed his legs, leaned forward, and, breathing down my neck, said, Isn’t it true that in the life of every man there are five black minutes?
    The idea frightened me so much I woke up, and since there was no one in any of the seats around me, I spent the rest of the night drinking water, watching the moon, and trying to calculate whether I’d already reached my quota of black minutes.
    That’s what I was doing when we pull in to Paracuan, Tamaulipas.
From The Black Minutes by Martin Solares, translated by Aura Estrada and John Pluecker. 
   
Martin Solares is a Sorbonne educated Oaxacan novelist.  The Black Minutes, his first novel, is a surreal noir set in crusty criminal Mexico.  It’s action takes places over twenty years and deals with several related murders.  Solares is a wonderful writer and the translators do their job handsomely.  One of the best first crime novels I’ve ever read. 
paul@prairielights.com