Mañana A Novel

The life of an American hippie in Mexico is upended by a gang of ex-cons in this thriller full of “wild surprises” (Carl Hiaasen).

All Tod remembers when he wakes up next to a dead prostitute is that he had his first shot of heroin the night before. He and his wife, Linda, were partying with their new neighbors, a trio of parole violators who fled to Mexico after robbing a Beverly Hills jewelry store. Now the place is empty, stripped clean except for Tod’s hunting knife, which is covered in blood. Did he kill the woman, or was he left behind as the fall guy? Convinced that his junkie friends abducted Linda to keep her from talking to the police, Tod buys a gun and prepares to do whatever it takes to get his wife back before he makes a run for the border.

William Hjortsberg (1941–2017) was an acclaimed author of novels and screenplays. Born in New York City, Hjortsberg’s first success came with Alp (1969), an offbeat story of an Alpine skiing village, which Hjortsberg’s friend Thomas McGuane called, “quite possibly the finest comic novel written in America.” In the 1970s, Hjortsberg wrote two science fiction novels, Gray Matters (1971) and Symbiography (1973), as well as Toro! Toro! Toro! (1974), a comic jab at the macho world of bullfighting. His best-known work is Falling Angel (1978), a hard-boiled occult mystery. In 1987 the book was adapted into a film titled Angel Heart, which starred Robert De Niro and Mickey Rourke. Hjortsberg’s work also includes Jubilee Hitchhiker (2012), a biography of Richard Brautigan, American writer and voice of 1960s counterculture.