A Melchor Marín novel. Winner of Spain’s biggest literary prize – the Premio Planeta
When Melchor goes to investigate the horrific double-murder of a rich printer and his wife in rural Cataluña nothing quite adds up. The young cop from the big city, hero of a foiled terrorist attack, has been sent to Terra Alta till things quieten down. Observant, streetwise and circumspect, Melchor is also an outsider.
The son of a Barcelona prostitute who never knew his father, Melchor rapidly fell into trouble and was jailed at 19, convicted of driving for a Colombian drug cartel. While he was behind bars, he read Hugo’s Les Misérables, and then his mother was murdered. Admiring of both Jean Valjean and Javert – but mostly the relentless Javert – he decided to become a policeman.
Now he is out for revenge, but he can wait, and meanwhile he has discovered happiness with his wife, the local librarian, and their daughter, who is, of course, called Cossette.
Slowly at first, and then more rapidly once ordered to abandon the case, he tracks the clues that will reveal the larger truth behind what appears at first to be a cold-blooded, professional killing.
Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean
When Melchor goes to investigate the horrific double-murder of a rich printer and his wife in rural Cataluña nothing quite adds up. The young cop from the big city, hero of a foiled terrorist attack, has been sent to Terra Alta till things quieten down. Observant, streetwise and circumspect, Melchor is also an outsider.
The son of a Barcelona prostitute who never knew his father, Melchor rapidly fell into trouble and was jailed at 19, convicted of driving for a Colombian drug cartel. While he was behind bars, he read Hugo’s Les Misérables, and then his mother was murdered. Admiring of both Jean Valjean and Javert – but mostly the relentless Javert – he decided to become a policeman.
Now he is out for revenge, but he can wait, and meanwhile he has discovered happiness with his wife, the local librarian, and their daughter, who is, of course, called Cossette.
Slowly at first, and then more rapidly once ordered to abandon the case, he tracks the clues that will reveal the larger truth behind what appears at first to be a cold-blooded, professional killing.
Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean
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Reviews
The portrait of a man who becomes a hero inspite of himself
A tense thriller from the first page to the last
Even The Darkest Night is a gem of a book, easily the best I've read this year. A contemporary police procedural with a literary edge. I was rooting for the flawed, but deeply compassionate Melchor Marín from the first page to the last. Highly recommended
A wonderful novel. I look forward to many more Melchor stories
The first in what promises to be an excellent series
Striking
Stays in the memory . . . Cercas perfectly captures the fearful mood of a town in rural Catalonia after the crime. He has also come up with an unusual detective
Cercas plays fast and loose with literary conventions . . . it will be fascinating to see how the character of Marín, a knight in tarnished armour, develops