Four Hands

A political thriller of spies, hit men, terrorists, drug dealers, and assorted malefactors, all involved in the shadowy fringes of the history of the Americas.

The narrators of Paco Ignacio Taibo II's wonderfully inventive novel, Four Hands, are Greg Simon and Julio Fernandez: investigative journalists uncovering an elaborate plot by an obscure American government agency to vilify the Sandinista leadership in Nicaragua. The story they discover and type out together weaves truth with lies, wild humor with tragedy, and reality with fantasy–a stranger-than-fiction tale of imperial excess where delusion makes perfect sense.

Joining such historical figures as Harry Houdini, Leon Trotsky, Pancho Villa, and Stan Laurel is a sprawling cast of characters that includes Alex, a spymaster with a knack for the absurd; Rolando, a depraved Mexican drug trafficker; and Stoyan Vasilev, a geriatric Bulgarian counterspy.

A “documentary novel” and a passionate satire about the means and ends of politics, Paco Taibo's Four Hands has been compared to the fiction of Marquéz, Dos Passos, Doctorow, and Heller.