The Case of the Golddigger’s Purse

Начало книги

This book was started amidst the Mayan ruins in Yucatan, and was finished in Colombia. Much of the plot was worked out while I was in a plane gliding smoothly over an interesting terrain of mountain and jungle. In between sessions at my dictating machine, I enjoyed meeting some of the most cultured and interesting people I have ever encountered — and much of my life has been spent in an association with keen minds and unusually interesting characters. Our Latin American friends are proud, independent, liberty-loving and intelligent. Too little has been written about the cultured, wide-awake citizens of these countries. Instead, we writers have been too prone to search for that which is “quaint.” We too have poverty. Our poor are crowded together in slums. To the south, the poor live in houses which are far more adequate, so far as healthful shelter is concerned, but because of the temperate climate, seem flimsy, if picturesque, to our northern eyes. Doors of the Latin American aristocrats don’t swing open to the casual tourist who has no other introduction than mere curiosity. They are perhaps as difficult to open as doors in our exclusive residential suburbs. Hence the “turista” has invaded the helpless privacy of the rural peon.

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