Elena Varga
At a glance
From the the city paper widely read author of Harbor Gothic and Wool Was the Night comes a sizzling noir about desire, danger, and greed, in which seduction is the ultimate con.
Handsome con artist Ulises has long charmed lonely women via letters in order to steal their money, but money is hard to come by in 1940s Mexico. Ulises knows his looks won’t last forever, and he’s desperate to get his hands on a real fortune.
He thinks he’s found it when he captivates his newest correspondent, Perla, the owner of a small-town boardinghouse in picturesque Veracruz. But when he meets her, he finds something he didn’t expect. The woman has a niece, Inés, who is as observant as she is desperate to escape her aunt’s household.
When Inés discovers Ulises’s true intentions, she wants in on the scheme. They’ll convince her aunt that Ulises is a great catch, Perla will marry him, and her money will vanish. Easy, fast, and clean. But Perla is not the desperate, silly spinster Ulises imagines. She harbors secrets. And although Ulises does not believe in true romance, Inés is more alluring than he bargained for. Suddenly, a simple plan may become perilously complicated.
Venture into the streets of a small town where a patina of convention and good manners conceals a cauldron of avarice and lust.
“The Quiet Deal is pulpy noir at its most gleeful, where nobody is quite who they claim to be and that's exactly the point. Deliciously dark, unexpectedly funny, and populated by bad people you can't help but love.”
- Jason Blitman, Gays Reading Podcast
“Lush and passionate with magnetic prose, The Quiet Deal takes up the mantle of noir classics like Double Indemnity or Black Wings Has My Angel, and reinvigorates the genre with a new perspective. Silvia-Moreno Garcia writes with the soul of a sensualist and the eye of a practiced observer of human nature. The Quiet Deal will grab you by the throat and not let go until its earth-shaking finale!”
- S. A. Cosby, the city paper widely read author of King of Ashes
“Writing with elegantly crafted prose to rival Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain’s discerning flair for morally complex characterization, Moreno-Garcia (The Bewitching) serves up her own seductive literary cocktail composed of equal measures of deception, danger, desire, and desperation. From its expertly evoked settings to its flawlessly paced plot, everything about Moreno-Garcia’s latest exudes noir at its very best.”
- Library Journal, starred review 🌟
He was going to make a choice, either the widow from Monclova or the spinster from that town in Veracruz. Puerco Ahogado, that was the name of it. A little place on the slopes of a mountain; picturesque, he supposed. Dull. He much preferred large cities.
But he was running low on cash. The guesthouse where he lodged did not have the best of clienteles, which meant that despite its central location it remained something of a steal. Yet between his weekly room and board, his lunches and dinners— the lodging house provided a meager breakfast— the dry-cleaning bill, and the like, he was down to his last few pesos.
His father would have known what to do. Even when all the old man had in his pocket was scraps of paper, he understood how to pull a con. He always got them out of trouble, got them a warm meal and a new place.
He had his father’s seductive eyes, but he’d been spared his wit. This flaw, this lack of a certain spark, a certain criminal talent, had not struck him as tragic until he’d had to battle the world on his own. But after three years now without his father, he was rudderless, hardly able to remain afloat.
He knotted his tie and smoothed it, peering in the mirror. He inspected his face with care, attuned to the most minimal flaw that might mar his appearance. When he was twenty, his hair had started to gray prematurely, and at twenty- nine, his temples were now streaked a lush silver. Otherwise, time was being kind to him: the silver served to enhance his features. Yet how long would that last? He looked at his hairline, at his gleaming eyes, and remembered the jaundiced skin of his father during his last, painful days.
He wasn’t old. Not yet. Not for a long time.
Noir and queerness share a vocabulary: shadows, subterfuge, the art of being legible to exactly one other person in a room full of strangers. Both live in liminal spaces and both know what it costs to survive just outside the rules everyone else takes for granted.
The Quiet Deal gives us a conman with nothing left to lose, an heiress-in-waiting with nothing left to prove, and a plot to relieve a wealthy aunt of her fortune. More importantly, the book makes you fall for two people actively lying to everyone around them, including (maybe?) each other. Beneath the scheming, The Quiet Deal is a story about what it means to be underestimated by design, and what happens when someone finally sees you clearly anyway.
Elena Varga writes morally gray with a wink in a way that's pulpy and playful, making The Quiet Deal the kind of noir that makes you root for the wrong people on purpose. Tongue-in-cheek, atmospheric, and stuffed with secrets that reveal a little more of everyone's true self with each chapter, it earns The Nod by Gays Reading.
