The story concerns three friends, one of whom, an unassuming insurance clerk, becomes enthralled with a glamorous young woman who entices him to kill her abusive husband. Once the murder has occurred she disappears and the clerk finds himself falling into an abyss of betrayal masterminded by one of his friends - who is also the narrator of the story and whose identity is revealed in the closing pages of the novel. Atmospheric, it is written with a strong sense of irony and an engaging sense of humour.
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3 friends. Alcaen Sanchez is an insurance agent, Iker Orbaiz is an aspiring / struggling writer, and Angel Biedma is a doctor. All three lives will be affected by the appearance of Laura Salinas. Alcaen meets Laura at a house showing one day and almost instantly falls head-over-heels in love. Within one conversation he is able to get her to agree to a "business lunch" as she wants to term it, which not long after progresses into several dinner dates and casual meet-ups. It doesn't take long for Alcaen to be in deep enough to feel that he would do anything to have Laura. Anything. (hint, hint. lol). As Alcaen's relationship with Laura slowly progresses, his buddies Iker & Angel decide to team up to write an epic crime novel, using anything and everything Alcaen reveals in bar conversations about his time with Laura to build a plot and a main character almost identical to Alcaen's stories. Alcaen's world, as well as his dreams of the white picket fence life with Laura, comes crashing down around him in one night when she relies on the use of some head games to quietly place the idea in his head that he needs to do something about her abusive spouse (the spouse, yeah... she tries to do a quick blow-over with that with a "oh, did I not mention before in all this time? Huh." Poor lovestruck Alcaen! But as the reader will see, her mind games don't stop there. Nope, there's all kinds of twisty twists crammed in those last few pages.
This little novella from Spanish author Benjamin Prado (this particular edition translated by Sam Richard) opens with a first person narration, but only enough for the narrator to reveal that he is one of the main players in the story he is about to tell, but you won't know which one until the very end (and I won't ruin it for you and reveal it here). The narration then slips into mostly 3rd person, but occasionally our narrator does like to interject something -- sometimes rather antagonistically -- in his first person voice.
There was something to the story that did have a noir-ish vein to it, but fell short of nailing it for me. Much of the novel just seemed to be conversations around the table, hinting at shady business to come, but the edge I was wanting to feel never quite hit its mark. Given that I'm reading a translated version, I often like to give the benefit of a doubt and say this sense of lacking could be something within the translation rather than the original piece. Just going by this English translation, it felt too much like a "just the facts" kind of play by play, not much left for the reader to imagine themselves. In fact, I laughed at one line in the book where the narrator breaks in and asks the reader directly, "Would you say this passage ruins the tension of the story, breaks up the rhythmn?" I couldn't help but think to myself, well funny you should ask Mr. Narrator... I also found Laura's attempt at head games a little laughable. They struck me as more cartoonish than anything, her story she uses to bend Alcaen to her will being built on cliche "my man is a monster" ideas.
There was one other thing that came to mind. This story struck me as sounding very much like Fake, Liar, Cheat by Tod Goldberg. Out of curiosity I looked up publication dates on both of these just to see which came first. Turns out Goldberg's book and Prado's original Spanish edition of this story both came out in the year 2000. But the English translation of this didn't come out til 2005. I'm not saying anyone ripped anyone else off. I'm aware that it's far from impossible for two writers oceans apart to have similar ideas. Besides, there were enough differences between the two that I wouldn't call them identical. I just remember reading this book and thinking this is reminding me of something. Just an interesting coincidence I thought I would note. If you read and were a fan of Fake, Liar, Cheat, this might be one for you to check out as well.
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