One of the best moments of the year for the black genre has arrived.
At the end of January and beginning of February, the editorial effervescence focuses on crime novels with an eye toward its big event, BCNegra, which this year takes place from February 5 to 11 in Barcelona.
That's why we've changed the focus a little from previous installments of these lists of novelties read and discussed so that they are from novelists present at the party (with a couple of exceptions at the end).
The complete program so you know which day your favorite author participates can be consulted here.
In case it doesn't add up to anyone: the number depends on how many we include in the reading guide by Jo Nesbo, the festival's brand new Carvalho Prize winner, and does not take into account the final essay (that one goes as a gift).
Read, go and enjoy.
Alicia Giménez Bartlett in the last edition of Pamplona Negra, at the end of January. Villar López (EFE)
The boss of everything
The Fugitive Woman
, Alicia Giménez Bartlett (Destino).
Thirteenth installment of the series that in 1996 changed the Spanish noir
scene forever
with
Ritos de muerte
.
The novel we have in our hands is a delight, which proves to what extent the author is in shape, and so is her character.
A classic mystery (who and why they killed a handsome French chef in a
food truck
in Barcelona) that serves to pull the thread and show an impeccable plot and mastery of language and rhythm typical of a master.
And those dialogues, full of intelligence and reticence, especially with Fermín Garzón: it is marvelous how we discover, novel by novel, the layers of this man who begins as a “redneck and paunchy” semi-retired sub-inspector who comes from Salamanca and ends up being an essential part of one of the most mythical couples in the history of European crime novels.
Essential.
Inspector Delicado is not doing well, not at all: she is darker, angrier, and that has only made her character grow until a finale that suggests so many things...
Here, a report from when the author left her great character for a while.
Thrillers
with more than just adrenaline
The Mountain Killer
, Anders de la Motte (Destino, translation by Pontus Sánchez).
Leo Asker is a police officer from Malmo with one eye of every color and childhood traumas that lead her to be obsessed with survival.
She has been demoted to the so-called Missing Cases and Wandering Souls Unit, a
cozy crime
touch in a story that is, above all, the classic serial killer: two young people have disappeared, the last time they were seen they were visiting ruins of the Cold War on a mountain.
The outline of the novel (divided into different perspectives depending on the character to whom the chapter is dedicated, including the murderer) allows us to know more than the protagonist and the plans of the psychopath.
The pure and simple police plot, the conflicts within the force and the investigation are very well told (not in vain, the author is a former law enforcement officer).
I have plenty of looks to the past in special chapters to provide information about the protagonist that could be resolved in a well-written paragraph or four well-described gestures, but in general it works well.
The psychopath, hidden among the different options, has something of
The Collector
by John Fowles (reference also present on the cover);
The protagonist holds the story well throughout its more than 600 pages.
The entire novel has very short chapters, paragraphs that often do not go beyond two lines, but that feeling accelerates towards the end, where, in addition, the succession of protagonists also becomes more frenetic and the reader, it must be admitted, It moves forward completely hooked.
The twists are the fair and typical ones that can be asked for in a story like this.
If you are looking for a Nordic
thriller
to spend two fun afternoons, this is your book.
The valley
, Bernard Minier (Salamandra, translation by Dolors Gallart).
After the excellent
Sisters
(a prequel that showed us Martin Servaz in his police beginnings within a complex plot resolved to the millimeter) the French author returns with the sixth installment of the adventures of this commander who debuted years ago with
Under the ice
and which has greatly contributed to making its creator the king of
thrillers
in France.
A call brings Servaz a character from the past: the mother of his son, who disappeared eight years ago.
From the call he only makes clear an approximate location, in the abbey of Aiguesvives, a Pyrenean valley, a spectacular setting in which Minier finds a setting that he best handles: fog, overwhelming mountains, night, cold, forests, isolation.
Servaz goes there, who has a small problem: he is suspended from employment and has an open file that could end his career.
He is tenacious and obsessive, but he also has a very curious point of compassion, and he knows how to surround himself well.
On this occasion he is helped again by Irène Ziegler, captain of the gendarmerie and a character who would deserve a series of her own.
It is a novel that combines the natural speed of a
thriller
with solid character development and an oppressive setting without falling into clichés.
If it is not the best of the six it is because it has tough rivals.
The forgotten son
, Mikel Santiago (Ediciones B).
Another fast
thriller
with its charge of adrenaline and testosterone.
In this case we have Aitor Orizaola, a police officer in low times after the resolution of his last case almost took him away.
He is divorced and on sick leave, and still limps when moving his 1.80 and 100 kilo frame.
They have accused his nephew, a boy whom he sponsored and protected during his early years but whom he later abandoned, of robbery with murder.
He is convinced that he is innocent, but he has to prove it and he is off duty and investigated by internal affairs for excessive use of violence.
A violence that he does not dispense with in this novel and that, since his beginnings with
The Last Night on Tremore Beach
, the Basque author uses like few others in the genre.
To make matters worse, Jokin, a friend and fellow Ertzaina, has committed suicide, but it doesn't fit Aitor either: a case that is inserted into the main plot and is followed with passion.
The Basque author's taste for procedural is evident and that part of the narrative pulls the whole thing together very well.
There is some humor, and irony of the character with himself, and certain colloquialisms, aspects that could hinder, but they work.
It is written after the famous Illumbe trilogy, in a world that essentially refers to that one and that belongs to the same creative universe, and aims to continue with the public success it had.
It has wickers for that.
I leave you this report of Santiago's first steps in the genre.
Ritual
, Sandrine Destombes (Reservoir Books, translation by José Antonio Soriano).
From the first pages and the presentation (seven feet cut off and tied together appear floating in the Seine River) to the end (a solvent explanation for each thread that develops in its pages) the reader follows an impeccable narrative investigation.
It is curious, because the author assures that she does not care about the procedural, and it may not be as it is in real life, but it is plausible and that, with the twists that this novel has, is complicated.
In this case we follow Martin (a committed captain), Lucas (his second), Laszlo (the veteran and thoughtful counterpoint to the other two), Chloé (strong and surprising) and other police officers who try to unravel a very dark crime. .
We don't know much about them, but that's the Destombes style: say the right thing and continue, administer the information with a dropper, respect the reader.
And move forward with dialogues that give rhythm.
It is the best of the four that Reservoir Books has published, a
high-level
thriller with a macabre edge.
Carlos Zanón at the presentation of the BCNegra 2024 festival. Albert Canalejo
Passion for history
The Vicar's Ghost
, Eric Fouassier (Principal Noir, translation by Claudia Casanova).
Second installment, again in the Paris of 1830-31, of a series inaugurated with
The Brigade of Hidden Mysteries
(in the same publisher, 2023) and which is being a success in France.
It has several keys to this: first, how well it integrates into the fashionable hybrid between the criminal and the historical (which among the Gauls has produced good books by Hervé Le Corre or Olivier Barde-Cabuçon, for example);
second, because he unapologetically uses all the references he has at hand and does it very well (the protagonist, Valentin Verne, directly refers to Sherlock Holmes in many aspects; his assistant, Isidore Lebrac, is an imitation of Watson, but he does not narrate) ;
and third, because it reads wonderfully, with the right dose of history, a certain erudition that does not hinder the story and a remarkable ability to navigate between two waters: a classic case to investigate (a scam, in reality, of a spiritualist on a poor man, hopeless since his daughter died) and a long-term theme, which comes from the first novel, namely: the fight against our hero's archenemy, an evil man called Vicar, darker even than the Holmesian Moriarty.
Verne, by the way, is erudite and educated, has his life resolved, dresses elegantly to the extreme, has a certain tendency towards introspection and is also a tormented being capable of taking action and crossing as many red lines as possible. are necessary.
An ideal character for a long series of novels that can be devoured in an afternoon.
Fun.
The first case of Unamuno
, Luis García Jambrina (Alfaguara).
Also in Spain, the most flexible and innovative genre has found a new vein in its mix with the historical genre.
But thanks to
The Stone Manuscript
, García Jambrina began the investigator Fernando de Rojas series in 2008 (now in its sixth installment) and became one of the pioneers.
With the experience of those novels and the same setting (Salamanca) the Zamorano author inaugurates a new series with Miguel de Unamuno as researcher.
Beyond curiosity (there are also recent novels with Gonzalo de Berceo or Jane Austen as detectives),
Unamuno's first case
has several virtues: he knows how to turn the philosopher into an ordinary man, a credible detective;
It presents us with a very interesting Salamanca, which is not necessarily welcoming;
and he is able to use the real character to feed the fictional one.
The plot: the chief of a town in Salamanca, Boada, is brutally murdered.
He accuses himself and quickly imprisons three day laborers, who had old disputes with the lord.
They even face the death penalty, an injustice against which Unamuno rebels and begins to investigate.
He is accompanied by a lawyer, Manuel Rivera, with whom they form the typical Holmesian or Quixotic couple.
The story gets tangled just enough and serves to take us through that Salamanca of stinking streets, monasteries and Renaissance palaces.
In the middle, that game of life that occurs in every good detective novel and a character, a young anarchist who helps them in their investigations, which is a delight.
The whole thing works, entertains and illustrates and you can see the author's craft and love for the genre.
Jo Nesbo in a promotional image.
Jo Nesbø, master of the Nordic thriller
One of the most outstanding writers of his generation, a true
best-seller
in the noir genre, the Norwegian Jo Nesbø is the creator of our beloved Harry Hole, that excessive and sometimes clichéd character, but also magnificent and who is in the hearts of millions of fans. to the genre.
That is why BCNegra has recognized him with the Pepe Carvalho award for an entire career.
Nesbo now has a horror book fresh out of the oven (
The House of Night
, Reservoir Books) but we are going to focus on the series that has given him worldwide fame (and a large part of this award).
For those who cannot or do not want to read all of them, we choose a few of the 13 that currently form a series that began in 1997 with
The Bat
, a notable debut and essential for all who want to understand the evils that overwhelm good old Hole.
We then jump to the fourth,
Nemesis
, one of the best: it begins with a perfectly narrated robbery and then moves on to a plot in which Hole is the main suspect in a murder.
Very good.
From there to
The Snowman
, of which there is also a movie.
It is the seventh but it would have worked as a perfect closing of the series, because it pushes the protagonist to the limit and his work as a police officer and squeezes out his relationship with Rakel, the woman in his life.
And yet, he had the strength left for more: I think
Cuchillo
(the eleventh) is very good (revenge and Rakel working at full capacity as supports for the plot) and I was left wanting more after reading
Eclipse
, which is the best What can be said about a series that has already had so many installments.
One of trials
The Devil's Advocate
, Steve Cavanagh (Rocaeditorial, translation by Ana Momplet).
This author has become an unmissable event with his classic judicial
thrillers
and, at the same time, with a touch of originality.
I liked
13
, and
Fifty Fifty
even more (both in this same editorial) but in this one he goes one step further and takes his antihero from New York to the deep south of the United States.
For those who don't know him, the protagonist is Eddie Flynn, a retired conman turned criminal lawyer, a rogue reverse of Atticus Finch but with a red line: he only defends innocents.
In this case, Andy Dubois, a young man without resources accused of murdering the young Skylar Edwards, with whom he worked at a roadside bar.
He faces the death penalty, because he has had the misfortune of being accused in a county ruled by prosecutor Randal Korn, the king of executions, a multi-faceted (and smelly) bad guy.
Flynn is skilled and cunning, and has a most curious team (effective partner, even more effective detective and advisor, a retired judge who exerts a curious influence on the lawyer and who has a charming dog) but here he faces the forces dark events that have run through the United States since its founding.
The plot is a successful back-and-forth of events, surprises and very well-conducted twists.
The structure is devilish in its apparent simplicity.
The author says that the southern setting occurred to him while he was reading the detective novels set there by John Connolly and Lee Child.
And he is up to the task.
Two outside the margins
The golden girl
, Pablo Maurette (Anagrama).
Silvia Rey is a secretary of the prosecutor's office who is “more ashamed than afraid” of a crime.
She is 39 years old, she doesn't mind being alone and she is a strong character but without fuss.
Her vacation has been frustrated by the murder of Aníbal Doliner, a peculiar biology teacher.
The first suspect is a taxi boy, a young, albino sex worker, but nothing is that simple.
The procedures move slowly and at a good pace, mixing interrogations with the protagonist's dialogues with her elderly father during breakfast, full of feeling and intelligent reflections.
There is also a large number of secondary characters, such as the pigeon-killing widow, who complete the narrative very well.
The police part is covered with that sub-inspector Carucci full of twists and turns, a very special character with his loneliness, his sweets and his indefinite attractiveness.
The picture is completed with a vision of Buenos Aires at the end of the nineties immersed in violence and structural corruption and hints of the cases that get in her way and that distance the researcher from the resolution... All of this supported by prose sober, which tells of violence without fear of being explicit but without abuse, one would say almost in an elegant way.
And with an ending that is not at all pleasing, pure delight.
GPS
, Julie Rico (AdN, translation by Elia Maqueda).
This is the strangest book on the list and, possibly, one of the strangest that we have reviewed here.
Hold on.
Ariane is an unemployed news journalist.
In her unremarkable life she interrupts an invitation to witness the proposal of her best friend, Sandrine.
An invitation and a shared location.
She arrives at the place, the party is a disaster and her friend disappears.
It is not known what happened, but Ariane continues to see the red dot on her Google Maps.
An investigation then begins into the whereabouts of her friend, Ariane's loneliness, the lack of meaning of everything.
There is something in this short novel told in the second person that is disconcerting;
something, also, that hooks.
The story breaks down to the rhythm of the protagonist's life.
The ending leaves a strange residue.
Is it a fake
thriller
?
Maybe, but it doesn't matter.
Seicho Matsumoto, in an image from 1980. Sankei Archive (Sankei via Getty Images)
A Japanese classic recovered on a double track
BCNegra has an excellent idea since a few editions.
Recover an author and all of his work and talk about him with experts and readers.
In this case it is the turn of the great Seicho Matsumoto, whose latest novel published by Libros del Asteroid (what a job they are doing) we mentioned in Elemental.
This will be on Wednesday.
I remind you that you have the entire program here.
An exception and a test
Dennis Lehane is not going to BCNegra, where in 2017 he received the prestigious Pepe Carvalho award for his entire career, but his new novel is one of the best of recent times in the genre and deserves to be seen in this window.
On the other hand, Eugenio Fuentes has been building a very personal commitment to the genre for some time, which finds his home in Tusquets.
He knows a lot about the subject and demonstrates it in the essay we talk about below.
The yes will be in BCNegra.
Go if you can.
Coup de grace
, Dennis Lehane (Salamandra, translation by Aurora Echevarría).
Lehane with the voice, the atmosphere and the Boston of
Mystic River
.
Any follower of the author who reads this sentence will tremble with emotion, but that's how it is.
The author of
Southern Island
returns to his hometown, to his memories, and he does so with a character with all the ingredients for the reader to dislike her, uncomfortable, but with whom it is impossible not to fall in love: Mary Pat Fennessy, Southie's mother, Irish neighborhood, white and epicenter of the racial crisis of 1974. A strong, violent, narrow-minded woman, raised in an environment full of hate, owner of a life that has gone through the worst (divorce, abandonment, the death of a son due to overdose, extreme poverty).
What Mary Pat cannot imagine is that the ultimate drama is yet to come and will affect the only thing she has left of her: her daughter Jules.
The wonderful thing here is how Lehane weaves this particular, intimate drama with the history of the city, with that dramatic moment, and all this in a place dominated by the mafia and with crime as the daily food of that violent, alcoholic and without society. future.
Coup de grace is also a detective novel, so there are interrogations and investigations (for the death of a young black man, the triggering event, but also against the mafia, for example), an exceptional policeman (Bobby, a former heroin addict, unforgettable character) and someone else who is scum.
All of them, including that black mother broken by pain and other secondary characters of minimal and dazzling appearance, are traced with the pen of a master.
And above all, that woman, Mary Pat, prevails and survives in the reader's mind.
Amen.
The underbelly of the heart
, Eugenio Fuentes (Tusquets).
Written with a tone “both critical and demanding of the black genre,” this essay is a small sample of well-managed knowledge.
The creator of the detective Ricardo Cupido (his novels are a calm commitment to carve out a place in the genre with careful writing and good plots since 1999) is committed to a vision that is not dogmatic—“no, there is no supremacy of genres”—, open and demystifying — “what literature does not give, no genre lends” —.
That, in the most theoretical aspect.
But then he playfully reviews a lot of books and authors in a walk that moves agilely from Arthur Conan Doyle to Arturo Pérez Reverte in a few lines.
This non-academic review fits a delicious long article on cycling and crime fiction or another that calls into question the topic of the genre as the best tool to delve into the mud of social evils.
Like Pierre Lemaitre's
Passionate Dictionary of Crime Fiction
, here you can browse its pages in disarray, jump between chapters or look for references to authors that interest you in the complete name index.
A joy.
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