With the tendency that the genre cultivates around interchangeable books and with a certain literary flatness, if not absence of any style, we are going on this occasion with four bets that are in bookstores and that prove to us that there is much more beyond. And they are still very well-made novels that will steal hours of sleep. Almost all of them have come out in the last few weeks, because otherwise I would continue talking about Mr Fox by Joyce Carol Oates or the latest installment of the great Ricardo Cupido at the hands of Eugenio Fuentes, for example, or by The king of ashesby SA Cosby (on the long list of Pen Faulkner finalists, since we’re talking literature). Come and read.
Death at Rook HallKate Atkinson (AdN, translation by Puerto Barruetabeña). The first thing that stands out about Atkinson is the gift he gives to Jackson Brody in this sixth installment of his adventures: remarkable intelligence and maturity. How well this is evident in the internal flow of the protagonist’s voice. Brody has had a peculiar life (policeman, detective, man who won the lottery, real estate agent, detective again) who is now a grandfather. This is how Agent Reggie, an old associate who returns to the scene in this installment, sees it: “This man was like an infection (…) Reggie helped cover up a double murder (“Quasi-murder,” he had described it). At least then he was not part of the police. Not like the previous year, when he helped him ‘reassign’ the identity of a murderer (‘redistribution of justice: we put the blame on the most guilty person of all’).” I guess you already notice the tone, the irony.
Atkinson could have cultivated this part of his career much more, one that has brought him great benefits and recognition, but he preferred to diversify, not abuse it. So we have Brody in top form and facing what seems like a simple case: a missing painting that is connected to the robbery of a Turner in a mansion (the one in the title) of a noble family in decline. A warning: Atkinson takes it calmly and presents everyone involved with a detail that only someone with a lot of skill can allow. By this I mean that around page 100 not much has happened, we have dedicated ourselves more to seeing Brody’s condition, meeting Lady Milton (the victim of the robbery), Sophie (housekeeper and alleged thief) and the local Anglican priest. He has always done it this way: if not, go to I woke up early and walked the dogwhere the detective does not appear until page 60. But if they accept the offer, they will see how it is worth it. It took us a while to get to Rook Hall and yet we arrived, thoroughly entertained by the lives and miseries of all the inhabitants of this intelligent novel. A theme night is held at the Milton mansion: a group of guests at the hotel that occupies part of the complex (you have to make a living, it is the destiny of this decadent nobility) has to discover the murderer, in true enigma novel style. Actors are then mixed with the protagonists of the novel and the family members, and all the plots (and they are not few, nor boring at all) come together in that mansion, that night, under the snow. I won’t tell you more. There is a lot of craft and fun in these pages.
The good intentionsVictor of the Tree (Destiny). Del Arbol started in 2023 with Nobody on this earth a trilogy that now ends. The goal? Place yourself squarely in the noir genre and “end once and for all the discussions of whether I am or am not and of the crime novel and whether or not it can be literary. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. Where is it written that you can’t write trying to reach the maximum and have quality? James Ellroy, Dennis Lehane, Michael Connelly… no shit,” as he commented to this newspaper. This was followed The time of the beasts (2024) and the one at hand. There are several reasons for the celebration. The trilogy itself is a noble attempt to go beyond the narrative advantages that the genre brings. There is also a certain search for depth (which on other occasions has resulted in excess intensity) in the themes and their presentation. Cryptocurrencies, corruption, violence, speculation, everything is treated in its proper measure.
In addition, it has a couple of notable characters that run through all three and some added in specific chapters. The author loves The Nameless Hitman, that professional killer whom we follow in first person. It’s very good, it’s original and it has some excellent lines, but I like El Gordo Soria better, a policeman full of flaws and humanity, one of the best characters that has come from the pen of the author of The sadness of the samurai. Let’s see more: there are two structures, one around the trilogy and another that is articulated in each particular installment. In this, we see how he challenges with several temporal shots and a narration from a basement, by the hitman, who has fallen into a trap. All the pieces of this criminal puzzle, which has its roots in the disappearance of two children many years ago, fit together in the end and the reader sees how the narrative lines and stories come together. Being the end of a trilogy, justice is also done with some characters (that Virginia, police officer, daughter of a gangster, with whom in the second he had not behaved at all well) and others are remembered (Leal, the cultured and impeccable police officer, who only appears in the first, an example of the risks that Del Arbol is willing to take).
A case of matricideGraeme Macrae Burnet (Impedimenta, translation by Alicia Frieryo). This author has one of the most particular and interesting careers in the genre. Father of a surprising and powerful fake true crime (A bloody planImpedimenta too, like everyone else) has subsequently gotten into various literary troubles from which he has always come out well (Clinical case was the most notable). Not even when he begins a detective series, of which this book is the third and perhaps the last installment, does he stay within the established margins. Georges Gorski, the protagonist, is a police officer in a nondescript French city, Saint-Louis, a place where, apparently, nothing ever happens. First point in favor: a character whose internal train of thought sustains the narrative. What is extraordinary about Gorski is his interior, what only readers can see, his current of thought. The entire first third is spent with mediocre cases, but the reader is not bored, he wants to know where this particular example of a loser, a good policeman, a good father, a mediocre husband (hence the divorce), an alcoholic (even if he is deceived), a social complex, a perfect culprit, who shares a bed with his mother, suffering from senile dementia, is going. And yet, whether it is the first novel in this series that you read or if you have already read the previous ones, you will agree with me that he is an endearing and somewhat pathetic character. The rhythm can be a little slow at times, too enthralled in the customs of Saint-Louis, a very boring place, but everything has its meaning: you cannot show the misery, and the crime and violence, that hide behind the facades if you do not first see those who live in them.
The plot develops with these premises. There is some death, but we cannot know if it is accidental or what. We share with the protagonist the doubts, the uncertainty about the suspect who is too smart, and only little by little do we clarify the picture. He plays very well with the management of information, as well as with that of suspicions. And then comes the act that justifies the title. And all the pieces arranged with patience have another meaning. There is a little more evil and a lot of misery. Poor Gorsky. With these ingredients we would already have a good crime novel, but Burnet always plays the meta-literary game and here he does it again: there is a prologue and an epilogue that are not really crime novels and in which the fantastic conditions in which the manuscript and the edition that the reader has in their hands are explained. You have to be very skilled to make something like this work.
The black islandsAlexis Ravello (Siruela). The work of the publishing house directed by Ofelia Grande to discover and care for talents of the noir Spanish is notable and praiseworthy. That happened with the last stage of the long-missed Ravelo, friend Alexis, who published these three superb novels, the definitive consolidation of one of the great voices of the genre in Spanish. Then came his death, like that of Domingo Villar, always unjust and always too soon.
We are looking at three mature works by a brave author. The first, Crab blindnessis perhaps the most archetypal: a classic investigation into a duel and the figure of César Manrique. As Ernesto Mallo says in the prologue, “As in all his work, what is important in all his work, what is important is not only the plot, but how it is told: with restraint, with accuracy, with a beauty that does not disguise the harshness of the world.” Continue with A guy with a bag over his heada novel with a very risky budget and brilliant execution. A guy who, as the title says, reviews on the floor of his chalet, with a suffocating bag over his head, who could have attacked him. As we can well imagine, the list of crimes committed by the victim is overwhelming and the novel is consumed in one breath. There is a sharp criticism of capitalist greed and other evils of the system and of human beings. A gem. and ends with The borrowed namesfor me Ravelo’s best novel, a story of people in retreat who are haunted by the past. The atmosphere is that of a fictitious town, a representation of so many hamlets with their vices and miseries. A twilight and intimate western, deeply political and black, in which the writing of the author of The Pekingese strategy It acquires a hardness not without poetry. I was going down a magnificent path. How much he is missed.
The last case of Unamuno, Luis García Jambrina (Alfaguara). The death of Miguel de Unamuno on December 31, 1936 in Salamanca serves as a thread for the author to pull in this novel that explores the figure of the Basque thinker and writer as a fictional character and that, at the same time, keeps the flame of doubt alive. What exactly happened in that room on the last day of that disastrous year? Another death, that of a prominent lawyer who has hanged himself in his office (here Jambrina plays with the classic locked room mystery) completes the plot. The author of The stone manuscript and here he uses a very active omniscient narrator who takes us by the hand through the different scenarios thanks to two detectives, the lawyer Manuel Rivera Jambrina and the anarchist Teresa Maragall, both friends of Unamuno; Together they form a couple as classic as it is effective. The two have a previous history with the great Biscayan author (the fictional one, don’t forget: this is a novel and History is there to make it credible): he, 30 years of research, including that of the previous book, and narrator of the adventures, like Watson; and she, a friendship and a love despite the differences.
The story takes place in two different time frames: one, in the recent past, with Unamuno still alive and investigating the mystery behind closed doors; another, with his two friends, in the narrative present, trying to elucidate the true causes of the author’s death. The structure plays an essential role here, and the two plots are well assembled into one, towards the end. The meta-literary game, which many will have intuited from the detective’s second surname, is delicious.
The extensive list of consulted works that he includes at the end should not scare anyone: one of the great values of Jambrina (a recognized expert on the figure of Unamuno and his tragic end) is his ability to integrate all that knowledge into the narrative in an organic way, without affecting the rhythm, without didacticism or Wikipedia paragraphs. If I had to point out a minor defect, I find the disquisitions on Unamuno and the Falangists a bit insistent. The ending is a perfect closure, although we know that the series has not come to an end.
a better manLouise Penny (Salamandratranslation by Patricia Antón de Vez). The Canadian author continues the Inspector Gamache series, which in this fifteenth installment offers us her best book. And that the previous one, The kingdom of the blindwas already the best to date and that the thirteenth, glass houseswas a radical and exciting bet. This may have to do with the fact that we are faced with an author who has created a particular universe around the fictional Three Pines (Quebec), a universe that goes beyond the spectacular landscapes, full of complex characters and addictive subplots. Gamache appears here with “fifty longs”, after a nine-month suspension and demotion in the Sûreté, but soon the action (in a Quebec flooded by a monstrous storm) will return us to the best inspector, the one who never loses sight of four maxims: I was wrong, I’m sorry, I don’t know and I need help. Great, right? The sobriety with which Penny describes the oral surrounding of an abuser is chilling, how Gamache catches him to discover what has happened to his wife, while fearing the worst. There is a clear point of tension around page 200, but the author is far from expending all her bullets. Furthermore, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, one of the classics, Gamache’s right-hand man and son-in-law, is retreating to the private sector, facing his latest case. Not in vain, he stars in two of the best moments of the novel, pure tension without artifice. Then, lives that really matter to readers who have been with Penny for years, such as that of the artist Clara Morrow, parallel plots that engage like the best soap opera.
Oh, lest I forget, both this novel and the entire series are also a love letter to the authenticity of Quebec. And to that group of humans who embrace and welcome in the middle of hell. This is how Penny herself summarizes in the acknowledgments: “These books are about life in community. About love and belonging. About the great gift of friendship. How lucky I am to live in Three Pines. In every way. With you. We are never alone.” If at this point someone wants to immerse themselves in this universe, don’t worry: it can be read completely independently. Now, if you want to get right into it, Salamandra has published in order from the fifth, A brutal revelationwhich ensures a lot of hours of good literary crimes.
resurrected lazarusRichard Price (Random, translation by Óscar Palmer). At the last BCNegra at a dinner with several leading American authors, one of them asked: is Richard Price really here? The height of the American author (whom I always prefer to cite for his fabulous The unpunished o The Wanderers since we are talking about books, and not because The Wire) is not well recognized in Spain. Here he presents us with a book that is directly related to one of his masterpieces, The easy life. Crime as a scenario, society as an element to be dissected, literature as the ultimate objective. In the style of Colson Whitehead, with whom he shares a publisher in Spain. The argument is simple, not simple: a residential building in Harlem has collapsed with at least fifty people inside. Part of the plot is articulated around the characters that we are introduced to at the beginning, people from the neighborhood with hard, complex lives. Another part with Mary, an immense character. It is about a police officer who is looking for one of the missing people. Their oddities (they cannot cross borders or bridges, for example) and their weaknesses are not accessories, they do not seek the strange for the sake of it, they have an anchor.
More in favor: the dialogues, the characters’ responses. And, speaking of characters, there is a search for a missing person, but there is a dazzling figure, that of the man who survives 36 hours in the rubble, comes out, finds his own voice, spreads a message, knows love, the world takes on another texture in the midst of daily tragedy, he feels useful for the first time, even though his story is not the one he tells: if that is not a perfect narrative arc… The book is full of findings, it is a neighborhood novel in the best sense of the term, a neighborhood ravaged by violence in which Price, as he already did in The Wireis not recreated; You don’t need to see a single drop of blood to feel the danger, the continuous threat, the daily violence embedded in the skin of young people. The ending may not reconcile anyone with the reality of the human condition, but it does with good literature, police or not.
