MY FAVORITE SCAR

The daughter of an Argentinian crime boss grows up quickly and violently.

Ferraro opens this sleek odyssey with a tough and resonant episode that encapsulates the entire story. After gang lord Victor Mondragón taps a tattoo on his forearm dedicated to his 15-year-old daughter, Ámbar, her name flanked by two red hibiscuses, and calls her his favorite scar, she efficiently removes a bullet that’s lodged there, something Victor taught her how to do three years ago. Their relationship is rich in love and danger. Ámbar’s early years were tough; she lived with her grandmother Lila after her mother left, seeing her father only intermittently. Now Ámbar and Victor embark on a cross-country tour of revenge, alternating between settling scores and lying low. Their episodic travels, narrated in Ámbar’s crackly first-person voice, brings them into contact with several colorful characters, including her uncle Charly, prematurely infirm but proud of his perfect teeth; Victor’s streetwise lady friend, Eleo, who’s resigned to a quiet, hardscrabble life; and Rata Blanca, an indolent, cocky thug Victor disciplines. Ámbar puts a pin in this last episode by shooting a television set. Along the way, she drops tidbits about her early years, noting, for instance, that “Dad used arcades like daycare centers.” Ferraro smoothly combines elements of noir, road novel, and coming-of-age story, the last most prominently in the story’s final section, significantly titled “Ámbar.” The climactic violence is both inevitable and devastating.

A brisk, gritty crime yarn less interested in flash than in dark authenticity.