Graham Greene, Élmer Mendoza and Daniel Silva: three very fit crime fiction classics

The covers of the Spanish edition of 'She entered through the bathroom window', 'La violoncellista' and 'Brighton Rock'.

Today we bring a selection of the most varied.

The trio of Graham Greene, Elmer Mendoza and Daniel Silva have only one thing in common: all three are very good at what they do.

The first died in 1991, but in recent weeks good signs have come from all of them that their universe has not been exhausted and that, from the most literary criminal fiction (Greene), the narco crime novel (Elmer Mendoza) or the most Spectacular spies (Daniel Silva) all deserve to be devoured.

We will see why.

More information

Criminal fiction does not rest: great black novels for the beginning of 2022

Cellist

(HarperCollins, translation by Victoria Horrillo).

We are not going to present the American author in this blog, one of the best examples of the spectacular spy novel, full of conspiracies, impossible characters and international settings.

Silva gives an extra ingredient to his intrigues: he is very good at reflecting the world we live in.

This novel, published last year in the United States, starts from the poisoning of a Russian billionaire in London in the midst of a pandemic to return his hero Gabriel Allon to his best moments.

It is very complicated to sustain the whole thing (Allon surrounds himself with other great agents, he is Israeli, a great art restorer, head of the intelligence service, he seems immortal) but Silva always succeeds.

She entered through the bathroom window

(Alfaguara).

Edgar

, Mendieta and her legion of fans are happy.

There she is with her little appetite, her instant coffee, her partner Gris Toledo and the horror of the drug trafficker with whom she lives.

He is a complex policeman, who survives with the most complicated alliances to justify, but with a code.

This time he faces a former military man involved in drug trafficking who has just been released from prison and cries out for revenge.

In parallel, he commits himself to a venerable dying man to find the woman who fascinated him decades ago, a redhead who entered one fine day, precisely, through the bathroom window.

A way for Mendoza to find some beauty and music among so much horror.

If you are reading it for the first time, do not be scared by the language, with street twists, Sinaloa regionalisms and expressions unknown to a Spanish reader.

He picks up fast, sounds great and is definitely

Brighton Rock

(Books of the Asteroid, translation of Miguel Early).

A warning: whoever is looking for a classic police has got the wrong window.

Now, whoever wants a story of the underworld, of the youthful desire to succeed in crime, a landscape of lost and injured characters, here is a good book.

Published in 1938, it is considered by many critics to be the first great novel by the British author.

The Brighton of the thirties —that place of leisure and rest, but also of mafias, bets, slums and crimes— is very well told, without distance, by knife.

Pinkie, that 17-year-old who wants it all, is just one of the great characters in the novel.

But I stay with Ida, sad Ida, her loneliness and her desire for justice.

The plot walks alone, smoothly, the violence elegantly hidden.