Book review: The Sound of Things Falling, By Juan Gabriel Vásquez

Already a fixed star of Colombia's new fiction, Vásquez throws light into the public and private shadows of his nation's tormented history.

His novels, with their spectral, riddling, immersive narratives that recall his beloved Joseph Conrad, intrigue, move and surprise.

Anchored in family secrets and hidden pasts - as here, when the hero's friendship with a pilot raises ghosts from the drugs underworld - his work revels in a David Lynch-like mood of eerie, time-lapsed mystery.

Once again, Anne McLean translates with subtlety and zest.