“Blood of Paradise,” El Salvador, David Corbett

Review of David Corbett’s “Blood of Paradise”

   Patrick Anderson

This is, in part, a political novel. Corbett believes that, despite the long and bloody civil warand the 1992 peace accords, El Salvador is still ruled by a few rich families who use rigged elections, corrupt police and unrelenting violence to maintain their power, and who are supported by the U.S. military-intelligence complex. His characters see El Salvador as an eventual staging ground for a U.S. invasion of Venezuela to oust President Hugo Chavez and seize the oil resources there. If these notions offend you, if you prefer to see El Salvador as a glowing example of how our nation exports democracy, you won’t like “Blood of Paradise.”