Our Lady of the Assassins by Fernando Vallejo, Paul Hammond (Translator)

Fernando, a writer, returns to Medellin after an absence of thirty years. He meets Alexis, sixteen years old, a male prostitute and a hitman - a Medellin child - with whom he falls in love. But their tender love is doomed. Alexis needs no reason to kill: like an Angel of Death he opens fire on anybody who rubs him the wrong way. Fernando and Alexis are bound by an intense passion as they wander from church to church, murder to murder. When Alexis is finally killed himself, Fernando unwittingly takes up with his killer. Reminiscent of the best of Genet, Our Lady of the Assassins is a dark, fierce book that squarely lays the blame for Colombia's tragedy on the church and the political elite.