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The Penalty by Mal Peet – review

Written By Unknown on Friday, August 28, 2015 | 4:19 AM

‘The way the two stories are interlinked and start to melt into one another is strange, disquieting and utterly riveting’

Soccer, the politics of identity, and magic collide in this powerfully written, frequently troubling, always gripping story of kidnap and voodoo set in Puerto Rico.

Paul Faustino, South America’s premier sports journalist, is meant to be relaxing and researching his book in San Juan, but finds himself dragged against his will, first by his own insatiable journalist’s curiosity, eventually in a more sinister sense, into the mystery surrounding the disappearance of El Brujito, ‘The Magician’: a teenage football prodigy. One of the great strengths of Mal Peet as a storyteller and a writer is that none of his characters, least of all his protagonists, are ever completely likeable: Faustino is sarcastic, sometimes to the point of cruelty; he is also occasionally lazy, selfish, and somewhat prone to distraction by beautiful women and men.

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