Alex Aldo Dober

Fly Diamonds is a brilliant gemstone. It is a complex narrative and fascinating story that follows the fate of young Mexican Juan Merlo, who escapes the slums of Tijuana only to disappear in Mexico City. It is a sophisticated book in which jewels, insurance money, law enforcement, and art are woven into an unusual story. In Fly Diamonds the fate of a slum dweller, his aviary full of homing pigeons, and his widowed mother living among the gangs of Mexico portrays the encounter of the two cultures, American and Mexican, through Juan’s struggle to avenge his father’s death. His ingenious plot to steal diamonds crisscrosses the border and puts into action US law enforcement.

Two narratives are intertwined here: one is Juan Merlo and his passion to settle the score with the TIPCO insurance company; the other is the San Diego police department and the Fly Diamonds heist that brings together Detective Ivory Godwit and an insurance investigator, Leo Stephens, in an unlikely romance. In the background is a painting by the American Matisse, Milton Avery, Paris Pigeons. It reminds the reader of the links between past and present and the two stories. In the final scene Juan’s antique store in Mexico City connects both stories around the infant putti sculpture he sells to the insurance investigator who’d come there to nail him. The object of the sculpture has an almost magical power to protect Juan from capture and bring the two law enforcement characters closer together.