Everything is cunning and double-edged in this novel, like those intelligence reports exchanged by secret service agents that end up configuring the murky undercurrent of our country, its wounds and fissures, its tragic urban geography. Partes de inteligencia was first published in 1987, but it is astonishingly relevant. A perfect subject for the truculent, fearsome prose of Jorge Asís, this novel takes on nothing less than the intrigue and plots that reduce a country to shreds, literally and metaphorically. The author’s good ear and polished skill add an assured formal sobriety to this solid yet subtly constructed novel.