My Favorite Scar by Nicolás Ferraro
My Favorite Scar (Soho Crime) is the English language translation of a book titled Ámbar by rising star author and coordinator for the Center of Crime Fiction at the Buenos Aires National Library of Argentina Nicolás Ferraro. This novel was his second work of fiction translated by Mallory Craig-Kuhn. It was awarded the 2022 Spanish Language Dashiell Hammett Prize. Unusually, jury voting was tied, and the honor was shared with author and actor Carlos Bardem, elder brother of Javier Bardem, for his work El Assassin Inconformista, not yet available in translation.
Cynthia Schmidt-Cruz, scholar, University of Delaware college professor and author of Argentina Noir (2019), a guide to crime fiction set in or around Buenos Aires posits that “novelas negro” or noir novels have become the most popular genre since 2000 in the South American capital. She suggests this literary style allows writers to respond to social malaise by voicing criticism of the widespread ills including corruption, drug trafficking and organized crime in a fictional format.
Nicolás Ferraro’s debut novel Dogo (2016) was nominated for an Argentine literary award in a category called “Extremo Negro” or ultra-dark which should make it abundantly clear his works of fiction are neither light cozy nor locked room mysteries. His writing is clear, compelling and explosive, yet, at the same time pensively poetic. His second novel Cruz, the first to be translated into English, was also published in Mexico and Spain.
Dark, Shocking Noir
My Favorite Scar is a triple shot of darkest espresso noir, drunk on a moonless night while bullets fly wildly. It is shockingly violent and often disturbing enough to drive this reader out of her comfort zone yet proved worthwhile to explore this South American author’s interpretation of a familiar hard-boiled genre. It balances one man’s quest for revenge with a softer, coming-of-age story as his adolescent daughter questions his life choices, their relationship and the faint hope of a different path lying ahead for her.
The novel opens with the lines, “You’re my favorite scar,” said by Victor Mondragon to his 15-year-old daughter Ámbar as he indicates her name tattooed between two red hibiscus flowers. It is his sole tattoo and high enough on his arm to be hidden by a short-sleeved shirt. He has repeatedly instructed her tattoos are identifying marks that can get one killed or arrested.
At present, it is covered with blood from the most recent bullet hole in his upper chest near his shoulder. He reassures her that the bullet went cleanly through him as she concentrates on the practiced task of cleansing the wound before patching him up. Ámbar has been picking out buckshot or bullets, sterilizing various abrasions, cuts and gashes, applying makeshift tourniquets and sewing her career criminal father’s skin back together since childhood with skill sets worthy of a surgical medical student.
His arms, legs and torso resemble a patchwork crazy quilt and “his body can be read like Braille” from a lifetime of beatings, gunshot wounds and shrapnel. Victor has spent his entire life in a violent criminal milieu. If cats have nine lives, he must be on his twelfth. It seems impossible but his face miraculously still retains the rakish good looks that continue to attract certain women although not his wife who deserted him and abandoned their infant daughter to her own mother’s care.
Young Woman Longing for a Normal Life
Ámbar Mondragon, protagonist and narrator, is already world-weary after her brief lifetime dominated by danger and uncertainty. She is self-possessed, highly intelligent and resourceful as well as being a very pretty girl who appears older and more mature than her 15 years. She has learned to be silent, adept at telling lies and assuming various aliases.
She can measure her life in missed milestones: the usual church rituals for a girl in a predominantly Roman Catholic Church including baptism, first communion and later confirmation. Celebrations of birthday, holidays, and the tradition of a quinceanera party or attendance at a school play or fete are unknown. Her early childhood years with her maternal grandmother were undoubtedly the most stable albeit scarcely remembered since “Abuela” died suddenly and Ámbar assumed the role of her father’s sidekick.
She longs for a normal life which she has only read about in books or glimpsed from school acquaintances. She would appreciate adequate clean clothing in lieu of a scant handful of old t-shirts, a pair of shorts and jeans. In reality, her only dress was sacrificed, torn into strips to fashion a tourniquet for her father. Ámbar dreams of attending school regularly, having friends, attending parties and living in an orderly home with meals that don’t originate in gas stations, vending machines or last chance diners.
Love and affection seem to be too much out of the realm of possibility with Victor for a father. He has taught her self-defense tactics, gun calibers and the use of various types of weapons as well as the fine art of creating false identification papers. Her knowledge base includes how to bribe corrupt policemen and divert attention from a car theft in progress. Her thirteenth birthday present was a shotgun, appropriately sawed off to accommodate her petite stature.
Compelling Thriller with Unique Family Dynamics
While clearly protective of his daughter, Victor is remote and routinely disappears on mysterious jobs or to spend time with one of his girlfriends. Ámbar is left alone for hours or sometimes days, not knowing his whereabouts, left behind in their rundown flat or a cheap motel with little money, few provisions, a Walkman with batteries running low, a video game console but with luck, a book or television in the room.
Occasionally Victor pleases her by calling her by her childhood nickname “Freckles” or brings her a hamburger as a peace offering for his fatherly shortcomings. He usually returns from drug runs to Brazil or Paraguay with a new word he has learned from a local dialect to share with her instead of bringing more desirable gifts.
Victor shows a complete lack of concern for her needs or wants and displays utterly no interest in casual conversation. Consequently, Ámbar knows little about him, not even his age. There is no origin story of where their family lived, worked or even if any of them are still alive. They are somewhere near the Paraná River border with Paraguay; small town names don’t matter and she has never even visited Buenos Aires.
My Favorite Scar begins in earnest. After Ámbar patches up her dad and he muscles his dead best friend Giovanni from the passenger seat into the trunk, she is tasked with driving the bullet-ridden car to a remote site for disposal. Victor has been betrayed and a routine drug delivery of a trunk full of cocaine bricks along with a vast amount of cash has been stolen. Retaliatory gang violence is imminent, brutal and he is determined to seek revenge while also ensuring his predictably short life will last a little longer.
Readers will be tempted to swallow this harrowing road trip adventure in one long gulp. Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and Mickey Spillane might be perplexed by the twists in the Argentine version of noir but Nicolás Ferraro knows how to grab an audience’s attention.
Nicolás Ferraro was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1986. While studying to become a graphic designer at the University of Buenos Aires, Ferraro earned a living by playing poker; now he works as the coordinator at the Center for Crime Fiction at Argentina’s National Library. Cruz, his first novel to be translated into English, has been published in Argentina, Mexico and Spain, and was a finalist for the Dashiell Hammett Award. My Favorite Scar has also been published in Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. Ferraro’s work has been translated into French, Portuguese and Italian.
