Death Takes Me by Cristina Rivera Garza

I am not entirely sure I got this book. It is a New York Times Notable Book from 2025, and I try to read at least a number of them, and while I think this is well written and literary, it is also allegorical and that is not my superpower. It does have elements that remind me of Latin American novels I have loved, and that is a genre I have read deeply in. The story is on the disturbing end, especially if you are not reading murder mysteries routinely, and examines the intrusion of crime into the lives of witnesses and detectives. A wave of men are being discovered, dead and castrated, their corpses accompanied by mysterious poetic allusions and all the marks of a serial killer to-be. The Detective, at a loss, starts enlisting the services of a local professor and writer, Cristina, who found the first body. The violence of the crimes starts a wave of impact that hits the professor, the Detective, her partner, and everyone else in its wake. The murderer appears to be a woman, castrating men, leaving behind poetry using ‘women’s objects,’ such as nail polish or lipstick. This troubles the professor and the detective both. Men start feeling that they have to protect their genitals in public and long for the days when basically women were subjugated to men so they could feel both safer and more powerful. So in the era of the Epstein files, where it it very clear that rich and powerful men like having their way with young women and children, we can see where the rage comes from. Read with caution, the material is gruesome but the emotions are understandable.