Revolutionary Collaboration

Subcommander Marcos, the leader of the Zapatista movement in Southern Mexico, is co-authoring a detective novel with best-selling crime writer Pablo Ignacio Taibo. NPR’s Lourdes Garcia-Navarro has the scoop. And the NY Times has a piece about it as well.

The first six chapters of the book, titled “Awkward Deaths,” are to be a sort of Ping-Pong game, Mr. Taibo said. Marcos is to write chapters one, three and five, introducing his detective, Elias Contreras. Mr. Taibo would write chapters two, four and six, using the protagonists in his previous books, Detective Hector Belascoaron Shayne. In the seventh chapter, the two detectives must meet at the Revolution Monument in Mexico City, where Pancho Villa and Lazaro Cardenas are buried.