Juan Carlos Galindo (Segovia, 1979), for more than a decade is, perhaps, the journalistic reference of the noir genre in Spain. Editor of El País, he combines the direction of the Screens section with cultural supplements within the newspaper and the essential black novel blog: Elemental. A regular at literary festivals or in nearby cafeterias, with a book by John Connolly half-started, he shows off his dandy look shaken but never defeated with enormous personality. Now comes his first novel: Hontoria, the name of a town close to Segovia where a multiple crime with different bases, silences and edges takes place.
Of all the possibilities of approaching the genre, Galindo chooses something not very usual in native authors. Carrying out a superb job of combining a tribute to provincial journalism, the parsimony of Japanese noir, a gastronomic guide to Segovia and an excellent procedural novel without active cops that lacks easy answers or commonplaces.
Juan Carlos Galindo looks from different places as he puts on the lenses of an obsessed journalist in an immobile, class-oriented, scared and proud city, which thanks to him he places on the map: Segovia. Well handled debut, entertaining novel, talented, exudes honesty and sips of beer. Black, of course.
A leading author of the genre in France (polar), he explains in a novel format the rise of the extreme right in France, its trivialization and how later the beast negotiates to enter governments and make nihilism a parlor game. So real and anticipatory that it is almost difficult to be read as a novel.
In Spanish and Basque, Jon Arretxe once again gives us another effective, direct and, to a certain extent, funny novel from the saga of Touré from Burkinabe. Whether in San Francisco or in the Little Africa of Bilbao, Touré and Arretxe have not lost their nose for telling little big stories.
Baulenas won the Santa Eulàlia prize, and regardless of whether he knew he was treading on black territory, the truth is that he has. The Barcelona of his work is always recognizable, loved and collapsing. Even more so here where misery and greed come together to survive, deceive and deceive: architects, retired professors recycled as waiters in the Raval and indecent propositions.
