21 black novels for the cold, the long weekend and Christmas, analyzed and commented to choose well

The cold arrives later and later, but in the end we have the perfect excuse to stay at home and read.

Protected from external evil, black novels offer us that restorative framework (fortunately not always) and stories that engage.

Today we bring a very varied selection by style, origin of the authors and subgenres in which they are included.

There's also, as we've done lately, comics and an audiobook.

And, as is the tradition around here, I know that there is much more, but what I include below is all read and I think it is worth leaving the tabs.

They will miss things, but at some point I had to put the limit, stop reading and writing.

Come by and read.

At your feet, teachers

Those women

(Siruela, translation by Pablo González-Nuevo).

Dorian, Julianna, Feelia... if they enter this novel as hard as it is wonderful, they will not come out unscathed, but these women will accompany them forever.

How rarely does one come across such well-created characters, with such a marked voice without artifice, so complex in their apparent simplicity, in their constant fight against the daily evil, which has crossed their lives.

Several portraits of the existence of each one of these women, inevitably traversed by the violence that men exert against them or their loved ones, intersect to present us with a

magnificent in a hostile, enormous, dark Los Angeles.

The structure is so well put together that, no matter when one discovers the key to the plot, the reader is overwhelmed when he understands the root of the crime, of the crimes.

Because yes, indeed, this is a crime novel and a lot of other things.

Brutal.

Joyce Carol Oates, at a book fair in Los Angeles, in 2018. David Livingston (Getty Images)

Babysitter

(Alfaguara, translation by Núria Molines).

Each foray into the genre by this author is a gift for the discerning reader.

In this case, she takes us to Detroit in the 1970s, to a wealthy family from a wealthy neighborhood installed in paranoia because of a child kidnapper.

The reader observes the effect of these crimes on the community through the vision of Hannah Jarrett, mother of a family in crisis, and her sexual dalliance with the dark side, an adventure that takes her out of the monotony but carries unforeseeable consequences.

a

psychological subtly charged with great themes, violence, racism, misogyny.

The final twist completely throws me off.

The feeling when you finished reading it was uncomfortable, as only some works that do not go unnoticed leave you.

I leave you this interview conducted by Berna González Harbour, in case you want to expand.

Two 'cracks' of the police

The dark hours

(AdN, translation by Javier Guerrero).

"How good it is!", I have repeated myself several times while fully entering a new plot described by the king of the American detective novel.

An impeccable procedure, full of quality, deployed in a subtle way that only the chosen ones can use.

The night detective Renée Ballard, a character we welcomed in

, is on this occasion between two cases in the middle of a society still hit by the covid: one of rapes committed by two serial aggressors at the same time;

and the one about a murder of a former gang member who crosses paths with an old case of… yes, you guessed it: Harry Bosch.

The great policeman is already old, retired, sick, condemned to review old cases over and over again in his mythical house on Woodrow Wilson Street, distracted only by those incomparable views of the city.

Because that is another of Connelly's virtues, an author who has opened his universe to other characters (Ballard, Mike Haller) and has mixed them with his great police to create the story of Los Angeles for the 21st century.

Ballard has strength as his own character, although we distinguish Bosch's moral traits in his work,

but it is in this police universe where he finds his true dimension.

She and us, as readers who love the genre.

If there's a television adaptation that does justice to a series of novels, it's

, in which Connelly is heavily involved.

I leave here more for those who are curious

The flame of Focea

(Destiny).

“The noir genre has a double-edged sword in the series of novels starring the same police officer or detective: they attract the public and build loyalty, but it is also difficult to sustain them over time, not to repeat themselves, to reach strength even halfway.

Almost 25 years and 12 novels after the publication of

, Lorenzo Silva has managed to maintain the vigor of the adventures carried out by the second lieutenant of the Civil Guard Rubén Bevilacqua, Vila, with the invaluable help of Sergeant Virginia Chamorro”.

Thus began my review of this novel for Babelia.

I'm talking about the series, its merits and its ability to hold up over the years.

I don't know if much more can be said about someone essential to understanding the genre in contemporary Spanish, so I'll leave it here.

Michael Connelly, at the Quais du Polar festival in Lyon, in the 2019 edition.JEFF PACHOUD (AFP via Getty Images)

Classics happily revitalized

Huntington Beach

(Asteroid Books, translation by Inés Marcos).

The editors had it easy when it came to preparing the press dossier for this contemporary classic of the least archetypal black novel, published in 1984 and now rightly rescued by Libros del Asteroid: the highest-level praise has multiplied throughout the years. the years, something that usually throws me off but this time it's fair.

Ike Tucker, a naive young man from a forgotten town in deep America, comes to Huntington Beach, California, to search for her sister and those who last saw her before she disappeared.

Through his gaze we see another perspective of the surfing myth and we enter a world of dreams, drugs, surfing and shady characters.

Belascoarán Shayne, Detective

(Kingdom of Cordelia).

Here is a happy event: the union in a single volume of the first four novels by Héctor Belascoarán Shayne, an essential character to understand the genre in Spanish.

An independent detective (not a private one, as he himself emphasizes) who got the title by correspondence and only began to shoot well when he lost an eye, Belascoarán made his debut in 1976 with

To me, the one I like the most of the four, in which this universe full of irony, humor and a good dose of political action is best represented, is

The girl with the ponytail is already a myth for some, but I prefer the plumber, one of his quirky office mates.

And the plots, crafted with a taste for the classic with a twist, always work.

As with any other recommendation on this list, there is a series on Netflix.

It is a good complement to the novels and Luis Gerardo Méndez embodies the detective very well.

More information

10 excellent crime novels of 2021 to read in the cold and rain

Maigret is afraid

(Anagram and Cliff, translation by Núria Petit).

The two publishers continue with the commendable effort of publishing a small but well-chosen percentage of the Belgian author's monstrous work.

In this case, another little delight in the form of Maigret's investigation, who travels to a small town to visit a friend and finds himself with a wave of crimes that he will have to solve.

The approach is as simple as its implementation is successful.

Nothing fails in Maigret's novels, narratives that walk without apparent pretensions, but that show Simenon's enormous capacity for the dissection of his characters and of the society in which he inserts them.

Whenever he walks away from his Alsatian woman and 36 Quai des Orfevres, I feel like I'm missing something, but I tend to get over it as I get deeper into the mystery.

Here is a report with data and curiosities, published precisely when in the summer of 2021 Anagrama and Acantilado embarked on this adventure.

The toughest (come in, you won't regret it)

Descent into Night

(Reservoir Books, translation by José Antonio Soriano).

The force with which the French author delves into the black of life never ceases to amaze me in each novel.

Let's talk about a dark police plot in the Bordeaux of the fifties (

) or in the fascinating Paris of the Commune (

), to cite two of his latest translated works, we will always find dark characters, complex motivations, violence and despair.

On this occasion, he tells us the story of a policeman, Pierre Vilar, who lost him the whole day his 10-year-old son disappeared.

Little given to sentimentality, Le Corre offers from this point on a detective story that, mixed with another apprenticeship of a young man with whom he will later come across, leaves the reader satisfied with a quality reading and overwhelmed by the intensity of the trip to the dark.

He said in his day that it was a living classic of the genre.

He wasn't discovering anything.

Interview in Bordeaux with the great French author.

The Leon Sadorski case

(Malpaso, translation by Julia Escobar).

First part of the six novels in which this multidisciplinary artist has addressed a particularly dark period in France: collaboration with the Nazis.

And what better way to do it than with a mean, anti-Semitic, corrupt policeman who is delighted to help perpetrate the barbarism of the invading army.

That is Leon Sadorski, an unexpected anti-hero, an uncomfortable guy who goes through each one of these dense 337 pages written in a present that, together with the large number of details it contains, give it the tone of a report, of a notarial deed that, however , works.

He demands an effort that rewards whoever undertakes it.

He fails, for almost non-existent, the plot, an aspect that he solves in the second.

Malpaso will publish the first three.

Here is the interview that my colleague Antonio Jiménez Barca did with him, in which he explains, among many other things, the reason why he chose such an unpleasant protagonist.

The Wing Goons

, (Sajalín, translation by Diego de los Santos).

Second installment of the trilogy of the swamps starring that mediocre boxer turned policeman named René Shade.

The novel repeats the successful plots of the previous one: brief, direct, full of great dialogues and with a plot compressed in time and measured to the millimeter.

There are no fireworks here: some ex-convicts intend to subvert the order created by Auguste Beaurain in Frogtown and for this they dedicate themselves to robbing poker games controlled by the mobster.

Shade will have to go after them and "save the taxpayer the cost of a trial", in the words of his own police chief.

From there, relations between citizens who move on both sides of the law with astonishing ease and official and criminal powers mix in an almost unreal context,

in deep America, in a place where I could never set foot in my life, but where I hope to spend some time soon when the third part of the series comes out.

Woodrell has strayed from some of the precepts that brought him fame and glory with

but he's still a master.

Mercury days

(Upside down).

The Canarian author follows his path of demand in each novel, in search of narrative challenges, which has made him one of the most interesting of the genre in Spain.

On this occasion, Alrevés recovers a novel published in 2009 in Anroart Ediciones.

A short story, written in the first person and set in an anonymous town in Franco's Spain.

The protagonist, a waiter with a shady political past, tries to blackmail the local head of the Falange with his homosexuality, an operation with which he intends to change his life and flee, but which leads to tragedy from the beginning.

On this occasion, Ravelo has opted for a plot more in the style of Jim Thompson or JM Cain, a drama in which there is not a single white character, in which everything is stained by betrayal, fatality and moral misery.

Let's have fun

Everything burns

(Editions B).

A new piece of the building with which the author is building the most overwhelming success of the

in Spanish.

It is, as he himself explains, something that comes from the universe created with

and the novels that followed, but you don't have to have read them to enjoy it.

A woman plotting revenge and two others who are going to help her.

A peculiar team of losers who have grown tired of being so.

Gómez-Jurado pulls from this thread to create a novel that does not stop for a second, in which something always happens.

There is a humor that does not quite work (perhaps it reminds me of Gómez-Jurado's character as a

, where it does fit), but the narrator's voice carries the reader very well.

As I read it, it reminded me of the tone of Tokyo in

, which resembles the pact he makes with the receiver and his idea of ​​fiction as a show.

The Princes of Sambalpur

(Salamander, translation by Jofre Homedes Beutnagel).

A delicious mix of the best adventure novel and the classic detective scheme of British literature come together in this novel, the second in the series starring Captain Sam Wyndham and Sergeant Banerjee (also known as Surrender-not) and set in India a century ago.

In this case, they travel to Sambalpur to investigate the death of a crown prince.

A simple plot with many things behind it.

Among them, a wonderful tone built in a first person full of irony and humor.

The best?

I have finished it and I have launched for the first installment.

Great hours of entertainment.

Jacinto Antón interviewed the author when he published the first one.

Enjoy the conversation.

Study in Crimson

(RBA, translation by Ana Isabel Sánchez).

The apocrypha always have their dangers.

If, in addition, we are facing the most revered and copied character in the history of the genre, the risk is multiplied.

That is why it is so enjoyable when an author undertakes a commitment of this style with respect, quality and success.

When he gets into, wow, the world of Sherlock Holmes.

In this case, Harris places him in a London besieged by German bombs in 1942, a city where women begin to die in the same way as the victims of Jack the Ripper in 1888. Two myths in one with which the author builds a fun and agile novel, in which the voice of Watson, narrator again, is well achieved and in which small details of the Holmesian universe are distributed throughout its pages to the delight of fans.

Those who have never read the four novels or some of the 56 stories in the Holmesian canon are in luck and can start there.

Those of us who have already completed it are happy with gifts like this.

Guillermo Altares, a pro Holmesian, wrote precisely about the desire to gloss the life of good Sherlock.

Men with female lead

Penelope's Discipline

(Duomo, translation by Montse Triviño).

A novel with a simple appearance and a classic structure with a great character.

Her name is Penélope and she was a prosecutor until her professional and personal life went down the drain.

We don't really know what happened, but the traces can be seen in the daily life of this woman who makes a living as a private investigator with small-time assignments.

Until one morning a man arrives at her office in the back of a cafe who wants to know who killed her wife.

It's that simple, or so it seems.

Carofiglio's engaging prose takes the reader through Penelope's life and her efforts to solve the case.

Everything works as can only happen with a good crime novel.

The end invites us to new episodes of Penelope's adventures.

We are waiting for you.

The mothers

(Alfaguara).

In this case and not to repeat myself, I would like to leave you with the review I did for Babelia, in which I explained the keys by which the trio of authors behind the pseudonym continues to function.

You can read it here.

The traces of the Nordic 'boom'

The sins of our fathers

(Seix Barral, translation by Pontus Sánchez).

One of the most popular writers of the so-called

closes the series starring the lawyer Rebecka Martinsson with this sixth installment, long awaited by her fans.

Martinsson will have to investigate on this occasion a mystery in several layers, of which it is better not to reveal much, in a region dominated by snow and with its capital, Kiruna, prey to the interests of a mine that feeds and devours those around it. .

There are in this novel many of the ingredients that made Larsson famous since

in 2003. Namely: many characters outlined with many details, plots that intersect with skill, landscape and a structure that opens and closes well.

It is not necessary to have read the previous installments.

There is a trade in these almost 600 pages that will entertain whoever lets it.

Family Crimes

(Motus, translation by Julieta Brizzi).

Classic Nordic crime novel perfect for spending an entertaining afternoon.

A man who had to run away from home as a teenager after committing a terrible crime returns to his town, an idyllic spot north of Stockholm, and finds something that we are not going to reveal so as not to spoil the start.

From there, classic Russian doll narrative strategy in which another crime emerges and from there another or another ramification.

He is investigated by Eira Sjödin, a good police character who also has his own family problems in a small, rural world where everyone knows each other.

He is well run and well resolved.

comic and audiobook

Old Boy

(Manga District).

The first of the three installments in which the specialized publisher has organized this collector's edition has it all: a man imprisoned in a private jail for 10 years is released for no apparent reason.

Now, the only thing he wants is to know why all this has happened to him and he launches into a search through the underworld and a review of his previous life.

In the solitude of his cell, he has become a dangerous man and soon he will have to see the faces of dark powers.

The prints by Garon Tsuchiya in which he portrays the city where Gotô wanders drive me crazy.

The comic is already a classic that received a huge boost with Park Chan-wood's film in 2003, but I prefer the drawn story.

The Academy Murders

(Roca Editorial, translation by Enrique Alda).

The brutal murder of a cadet with macabre overtones shatters the coexistence of the West Point military academy in 1830. To investigate it, a retired policeman and widower, lover of the deductive process, and a distracted student of the academy, unredeemed poet, highly educated young man from name Edgar Allan Poe.

The narration drinks from all the classic tradition of the great novel, it flows at a calm and constant rhythm, it has traces of what it imitates with skill: a great novel of the 19th century.

Most risky of all, Poe's voice works.

It is the only novel in the series that I have not read, but listened to on audiobook narrated by Pablo Ibáñez on the Podimo platform.

In audio it works like an entertaining classic mystery story, but I always wonder if that effect translates to paper.

coda: a gift

Damn luck

(Gatopardo, translation by Margarita Palmer).

I have thought a lot about whether or not to include this recommendation, the latest translated book by one of my favorite contemporary authors, whom Gatopardo is taking care of with the care it deserves.

Osborne uses elements of the genre on many occasions without making black novels (

or

).

The same thing happens to him with travel or adventure literature (

).

In this case, Lord Doyle spends endless days gambling in Macau casinos.

but he is not lord

and probably not even the last name Doyle.

He is a born loser, like so many who populate the endless nights of the Asian gambling mecca, who stole a good amount from a rich heiress before fleeing the United Kingdom forever.

In Macao he survives as he can, between great peaks of fortune and precipices of ruin and defeat, in a sordid world, overwhelmed by cigarette smoke and a certain dark relationship with luck and destiny.

The presence of the mafias that control everything is perceived, there are bets, desperation and no less than a couple of crimes.

And it is a superb book built only with the obsession, and the voice, of a man who strives to destroy himself.

The secondary characters that come across him (millionaires, prostitutes, addicted gamblers,

casino directors) are small narrative jewels built with three brushstrokes.

How many novels fully installed in the genre do not even reach half.

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