In the best writers, or at least in the most interesting ones, this inconstant evolution is discovered, that groping of genres and arguments ... No narrator should be born with a clear desire for according to what stories. Because in the exploration there is the true literature, the one that is born from within to have that verisimilitude of who has traveled to all the confines of creativity.
In that he walked and walks Arantza Portable Holders, a writer who currently stands out in the noir genre precisely because she has known how to polish herself as an author, with that craft that only confers dedication to the meta-literary rather than to brilliance or the easy paragraph. This is how you distinguish good stories from ready-made products.
Authenticity is a hallmark that fills his characters with nuances, that adorns the scenes much more than is descriptive, that multiplies the meanings of his dialogues and that moves the action with the solvency of an ingenious conjurer. And yes, Arantza Portabales is also working on this to conquer readers capable of enjoying the most exquisite literature, regardless of the genre where it is located. For many the new Dolores Redondo, simplifying the matter. The best thing is not to think about substitutions but about enriching alternations ...
Top 3 recommended novels by Arantza Portabales
The man who killed Antía Morgade
The reunions also have their disturbing point beyond the future of each one. Because sometimes the past has its pending debts that only creditors remember. In fact, an appointment with the most remote and even uncomfortable past does not usually augur kindness around pleasant memories. But curiosity always pushes, and just as one should not return to the places where they were happy, it is strange how on occasion one returns without hesitation, with a point of morbidity, to where one could have become absolutely unhappy.
Santiago de Compostela, 2021: six friends attend a reunion dinner after more than two decades without seeing each other. During the fireworks display prior to the Apostle's festival, a point-blank shot kills one of them.
It will soon become clear that the key to the murder goes back to what happened in the apartment for minors they shared as teenagers: the suicide of Antía Morgade after one of her educators, Héctor Vilaboi, abused her. After a twenty-year prison sentence, Vilaboi has just returned to the streets, but has disappeared without a trace.
The inspector Santiago Abad and the sub-inspector Ana Barroso will have to face the resolution of a crime in which all the indications point to the "man who killed Antía Morgade", but, as a series of unexpected secrets come to light, both they will have to find a way to overcome themselves to avoid a new murder.
Surviving
Reality shows with their sinister side are nothing new. Including Truman, the guy who spends his life ignoring that everything has been part of a show since he was born. And it's a bit about that... in the hyperbolic aspect of discovering the complete intimacy of one's neighbor, the morbidity ends up reduced to the minimum expression and what remains in its place is a feeling that that other life contemplated on television can also happen to us. be yours…
After the death of her husband (tycoon Matías Wagner, whom she married when she was fifteen pregnant), Val Valdés appears on Surviving, the first reality show to be broadcast in Spain, and turns national television upside down. After making the whole country fall in love and winning the contest, she founded a business empire and withdrew from the public scene until, several years later, she turned herself in to the police as guilty of the murder of Dani Leis, a former schoolmate in Santiago de Compostela.
Like Joël Dicker or Pierre Lemaitre, Arantza Portabales assembles with great precision and frenetic pace the pieces of an absorbing intrigue around an exceptional protagonist: Val Valdés, a successful woman who never stops savoring defeat.
Red beauty
The solvency of a genre author also involves recomposing the most classic pieces of that genre. Locking characters in a house to discover the murderer is the pinnacle of classic noir. Portabales' expertise restructures everything while he is able to remain faithful to certain non-negotiable principles of narrative tension.
Six suspects dine in the garden of a luxurious house on the outskirts of Santiago de Compostela while the body of XNUMX-year-old Xiana Alén lies on the blood-soaked floor of her bedroom, as if it were an artistic installation: her parents, her Aunt Lía Somoza -an painter of international fame-, a couple of friends and the elderly aunt of the Somoza sisters.
All the signs point to Lía, but a few days later she tries to commit suicide and is admitted to a hospital. Commissioner Santi Abad, with the help of Ana Barroso -a young, strong and temperamental policeman with whom he will unite an intense and conflictive relationship-, must uncover the best-buried secrets of the Alén Somozas, one of the most powerful and wealthy Galician high society.
Other interesting books by Arantza Portabales…
The Secret Life of Úrsula Bas
The misty Galicia once again grasps heaven and earth in that all of claustrophobic atmosphere at times. In the straits that telluric force is awakened that make us look for explanations to the inconceivable in any extraordinary element
Úrsula Bas, a successful writer, leads a seemingly bland life in Santiago de Compostela. One Friday in February he leaves his house to give a talk in a library and does not return. Her husband, Lois Castro, denounces her disappearance after twenty-four hours. Úrsula, who remains locked in a basement, knows her kidnapper well, an admirer in whose networks she has allowed herself to be wrapped up without offering the slightest resistance, and she knows that sooner or later he will kill her.
Inspector Santi Abad, reincorporated to the police force after a year and a half of psychiatric leave, and his partner Ana Barroso, who has just been appointed deputy inspector, begin a relentless search with the help of the new commissioner, Álex Veiga. All their steps lead them towards another unsolved case: that of Catalina Fiz, who disappeared in Pontevedra three years earlier, and towards a murderer who seems to be taking justice into his own hands.
Leave your message after the beep
A surprising story far removed from the noir where the author currently moves ...
Unable to face their secrets, loneliness and the men they would like to talk to, the four protagonists of this choral novel prefer to leave their confessions on the answering machine.
Marina is a lawyer specialized in divorces and defies the abandonment of her husband; Carmela is ill with cancer and needs to say goodbye to her son; Sara is a young woman from a good family who the pressure of her imminent wedding has brought to the brink of suicide and dubious psychological therapy, and Viviana is a prostitute in Madrid, although her family believes that she works at Ikea.
Message by message, their lives are drawn and that same answering machine that receives their confidences will braid their stories, revealing the enormous liberating power of the word. Message by message, the reader advances wanting to know the end and also discovering himself with equal voracity. The revelation of a great author with an intelligent, moving and humorous look on love, loneliness and communication in the times of the mobile.
