The three narrators are what make this book interesting. Three narrative perspectives, the interests and worldviews of which Bolaño had to keep track. Thinking of it this way makes me see the book as a small feat.
I will not spoil the ending, but I will say that the revelation of the crime holds a randomness that strikes me as accurate, accurate to a certain kind of violence, as if it had bubbled out of an unrelated desperation, a pervasive, underlying desperation within which violence appears at random.
I got a bit tired of and bothered by the underdeveloped character of Nuria, but what do we see of Bolaño’s female characters—that they are physically “beautiful” and that’s about it. ( )

Tres versiones de un crimen surgen en esta novela que transcurre en un pueblo de la costa española: la de un chileno con pretensiones de escritor que ha ejercido toda clase de oficios hasta salir adelante; la de un mexicano, también poeta y desarraigado, que sobrevive como vigilante nocturno en un camping; y la de un emprendedor catalán metido a político, capaz de todo por llamar la atención de una caprichosa patinadora. Los peores presentimientos de cada protagonista tienen relación con una pista de hielo construida ilegalmente dentro de una casona abandonada.

Another great turn for Bolaño. The three narrators take a few chapters to get the hang of, but once it's moving, it moves very quickly. ( )

3.5 A good, not exceptional, short Bolaño novel. Big ups for being a murder-mystery! Worth it for the signature multi-voiced narrators and emotional range, though not the scope or depth he has shown elsewhere. ( )

Costa Brava noir rife with corruption and a homicidal miasma as refracted through three fragmented POVs which overlap and occlude with a masterful touch. ( )