Critical Essay | Critical Review by John Butt

Critical Review by John Butt

SOURCE: Butt, John. “Death in Bogotá.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4879 (4 October 1996): 26.

In the following review, Butt praises García Márquez's journalistic excellence in News of a Kidnapping.

On the evening of November 7, 1990, the car carrying Maruja Pachón and her sister-in-law, Beatriz Villamizar, was ambushed in a Bogotá street by assassins sent by the boss of the Medellín cocaine cartel, Pablo Escobar. The attackers briskly killed the chauffeur and drove the two women away to captivity. Maruja Pachón's slender claim to fame was that she was the sister-in-law of Luis Carlos Galán, a New Liberal politician and an enemy of the cocaine traders, who had been murdered the year before. The kidnappers belatedly decided to keep Beatriz when the radio identified her as the sister of another well-known Colombian politician.

Gabriel García Márquez's latest book [Noticia de un secuestro], which will appear in English translation soon,...
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