The Pinochet Plot – a must read

I never read mysteries, but I sure gobbled up David Myles Robinson’s new one – The Pinochet Plot. It’s smart, fast paced, well narrated, and full of interesting characters. So I’m very pleased to have the opportunity today to share Robinson’s book and my thoughts about it with you.

About the book

Successful San Francisco attorney Will Muñoz has heard of the brutal former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, of course, but it’s not until he receives his mother’s suicide letter that he has any inkling Pinochet may have had his father, Chilean writer Ricardo Muñoz, assassinated thirty years earlier.

Her suspicions spur Will on to a quest to discover the truth about his father’s death–and about the psychological forces that have driven his mother to her fatal decision. His journey takes him deep into unexpected darkness linking his current step-father, the CIA, drug-experimentation programs, and a conspiracy of domestic terrorism. The Pinochet Plot is not just a story of a man seeking inner peace; it is also a story of sinister history doomed to repeat itself.

Paperback: 280 pages
Publisher: Terra Nova Books (May 1, 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1938288203
ISBN-13: 978-1938288203
Amazon Link

About the author

David Myles Robinson grew up in Pasadena, CA. He holds degrees from San Francisco State University and the University of San Francisco School of Law. After practicing law for thirty-eight years in Honolulu, Hawaii, he retired with his wife, former Honolulu judge Marcia Waldorf, to Taos, NM. Robinson is the author of three previous novels: legal thrillers Tropical Lies and Tropical Judgments, and Unplayable Lie, a golf-related suspense novel.

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My review of The Pinochet Plot

I loved The Pinochet Plot. In fact, it was the first book I recommended when a friend asked me for book suggestions. That’s quite a breakthrough for me since I don’t normally read detective and murder mystery novels. Nevertheless, I was hooked from Page One. I found the writing clear, concise, witty, and informative with lots of necessary asides and back story. The Pinochet Plot’s author, David Robinson’s, use of a first-person narrator is, in my opinion, the perfect way to tell this story.  And that the narrator, Will Munoz, a successful San Francisco attorney, and his two partners are the main characters provide the glue necessary to the telling.

Pinochet was the a Chilean general, politician and the dictator of Chile between 1973 and 1990, the Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army until 1998 and the President of the Government Junta of Chile between 1973 and 1981. However, after he left office he was charged with numerous human rights violations, tax evasion, and embezzlement during and after his rule. At the time of his death in 2006, 300 charges were still pending.

Thus, Robinson makes Pinochet  the center of this novel – a man accused of arranging the death of Munoz’ father, the Chilean writer, Ricardo Muñoz – a fact that only became known to the narrator when he reads his mother’s suicide note. The relates the story about the murder and how her second husband, the narrator’s step father, might also be involved. Already complicated, right? And as his quest began and became all-encompassing until he got the answers he was searching for, the story and characters and the murders get all the more interesting and complicated.

That said, I won’t go into details. I don’t want to spoil your read about how the mystery got solved, But I will tell you there’s a lovely bit of a romantic story interwoven in the book as well.  The Pinochet Plot kept me reading all the way through. So, I congratulate David Myles Robinson on his story telling ability, and most of all, for keeping me turning the page.

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I hope I’ve encouraged you to read The Pinochet Plot. I promise you won’t be disappointed. Please let me know what you think.