I returned to Santa Rita. I met many characters from the previous novel. And it was fine. It’s like bringing back a group of friends you haven’t seen in almost a year and are about to spend a few hours of fun. But not everything is as peaceful as it seems, because when a wall of the estate collapses, you find a pile of rubble along with a baby skeleton and some precious early 20th century paintings. But as if that wasn’t enough, there is one more dead. This is what you need to meet with these people from Santa Rita: They attract stories outside of most people’s daily lives.
Amores que matan (Roca editorial, 2023), written by Eldense author Elia Barceló, is the second novel in the Santa Rita saga. It has just been released and was presented on Elda last Thursday. In it, I witnessed a very complex plot (Santa Rita, the salesman, his wife, a lover, and even a Russian mafia) because of the author’s customary style, his argument and conclusion simple, but due to the large gallery of characters involved, and the multitude of topics covered. And all adhered to the maximum type of police: here the end of the story is not resolved until the last page.
The omniscient narrator describes events and introduces characters in different linguistic styles (from the most poetic to the most social). We meet Sofia, the head of the intergenerational Santa Rita neighborhood, and her niece Greta. In addition, Inspector Lola and retired Commissioner Robles are the protagonists of this installment, who will try to uncover the killer the reader has known all along. This plot unfolds as a result of someone else’s, the baby’s skeleton, which relates to Sofia’s family’s past; If in the previous novel the mystery was in his generation, now it is passed on to the previous generation. In both plots, I witnessed the usual cocktail of genres in Elia Barceló’s novels because, although conceived as a detective novel, at times, like the love triangle between Monique’s guest characters, it almost completely delves into the rosy sentimental novel. The pleasure of certain outfits, such as Chantal and dead or capri pants and Panama hats; but it’s also a feminist protest novel, so almost all male characters are hardly recommended. And finally, with part of a sequence so that everything fits together. All this is well synthesized in the wording and connotations of the title of the novel.
I think this mix is for the pleasure of the reader who is never indifferent to acting. It is clear that the author had a lot of fun writing this novel. Thus comparisons with Thor include a taste of cosmopolitan and high society sensationalism, the use of words from other languages, even from the Sufi tradition, choosing between unusual teas, or quoting Heraclitus. All framed in attractive and sophisticated settings such as Lake Maggiore, Rome or Geneva. In addition, the transfer of encyclopedic data about the pictorial movement of “El Jinete azul” or the Mystery of Elche is also presented. To all these aspects of the content, the sudden intensity of some of the dialogue (the talk about vasectomy is catchy); graphic and intense depictions like Sofia’s father; or manifestations of the total revenge of one of the protagonists of the love triangle: “I hope you have suffered, even if it is only a fraction of what I am suffering now” (p.360).
And why should you read this novel? In principle, due to its original understanding of narrative (already a household brand) by mixing and interweaving different narrative genres in it; And of course, because the intensity and fun that Elia Barceló feels while writing is undoubtedly transferred to the amusement of his readers. I’m waiting for the third.