Surely those born in the eighties are the last trace of a world dotted with arcades, cassettes and other vestiges of the late XNUMXth century. And, listen, this is how creative writers like Benedict Elm, David B Gil o Javier Castillo (to cite three eighties among whom similarities can be found, whether in plot, reference or style). The children of the movement perhaps, the last of the analog era perhaps. Storytellers in which you can find classic and avant-garde patterns. Advantages of generational mixing.
In the case of Cadiz writer Benito Olmo his novelistic facet is that creative part where he can pour part of his enormous imagination. Because then there is his delivery to the script and to literature from the other side where more than creativity rules order and correction ...
But since he is a novel, the truth is that Olmo is unleashed in each new novel with that liberation that every dark narrative entails. Because as I recently read in a post by Patricia Esteban, literature should tell us everything, however obscure it may be, without having to submit to restraints or the current prudish censorship later. And in these there is an Olmo that at times seems to rescue the purest noir with that flavor of suburban offices where, nevertheless, the heart of the big cities beats.
Top 3 recommended novels by Benito Olmo
The Big Red
Death always had a price. When you know how to draw as God commands, you discover that in addition to price, it has origin, stamp and brand. Only to move around the circuits where life is priced wholesale, you have to know how to bid without losing your own life ...
Mascarell is the guy you turn to when you have no other way out. Used to navigating the red light district, drug stores, and some of Frankfurt's stinkiest slums, his reputation for solving has earned him a solid reputation as a hopeless detective. However, one bad day will be forced to deal with a stranger than usual assignment and too well paid to be legal.
His path will cross that of Ayla, a teenager determined to find out the truth after the death of her brother and to clarify the murky issues in which he was involved before dying. The investigation will take them around some of the less recommended places in the city and will place them in the crosshairs of the Big Red, the organization that lives in the shadow of skyscrapers and has no mercy on those who meddle in their businesses.
The Sunflower Tragedy
Manuel Bianquetti is not going through his best moment. His times as a renowned police inspector are engulfed in a persistent fog of memories locked between feelings of guilt and remorse.
Dedicating himself to research in a private capacity becomes the only way out for a guy like him, with few prospects for the future beyond his years of performance, from which he has now been moved away as a result of a last case in which he ended up bungling her. .
Earning a living in the refuge of people who seek answers to alleged infidelities or who pay to learn about the movements of staunch enemies does not seem entirely worthy for his former condition. But it is what remains.
A new case, this time to provide protection services to a businessman visiting the city, is presented as a good opportunity to face his pressing financial needs. Except that the service, in principle simple for a guy like him, turns out to be a task that is poisoning itself until it completely surpasses him.
Around this commission a chain of murders is happening that does not manage to link with the supposed description of his protégé. Something escapes him ... And to add insult to injury she appears. Some kind of miracle in his life. A new opportunity to find peace in his warm arms.
Waking up to such a dream is not always easy. Rather, it is never easy. Love obfuscates, her overriding need clouds reason to the point that only she matters. At any other time, Manuel would have kept his distance or simply would have taken advantage of it until the final carom in which he took advantage of the girl and closed the case. But now it is not the same. The situation has caught him off guard and it matters little to take the blows.
Yes, Manuel is a sunflower at the cyclical whim of his new sun. And only outside his influence could he once again consider that the truth of what is happening is what is truly transcendent.
The turtle maneuver
Bianquetti is a guy brought to the present day from a twentieth century imaginary where heroes could be villains at the stroke of a checkbook or with their nerve. Times those in which the certainty that corruption could with the most paint was only a matter of minimal understanding. Until the dead and the envelopes began to be kept under fluffy rugs that today can with everything ... Bianquietti is therefore a necessary type in literature and like a fucking Sherlock Holmes that shows that little has changed from then to now and always ...
Pushed by misfortune, the irreverent Inspector Manuel Bianquetti is forced to accept a forced transfer to the Cádiz police station, a predictably quiet fate that will be altered by the discovery of the body of a sixteen-year-old girl. A violent death that will bring him reminiscences of a past that he cannot rid himself of.
Despite the opposition of his superiors, Inspector Bianquetti will undertake a solitary crusade to catch the culprit by following the trail of evidence that may not exist beyond his imagination. Reality darkens as the reader devours pages while participating alongside the protagonist in the investigation of an increasingly murky and rugged case.
Other recommended books by Benito Olmo
The Happy Days
Detective Mascarell and Ayla once again find themselves involved in the shadiest business in Frankfurt. Because we always find, in the real world, the most aberrant circumstances, contexts and environments. Dehumanization by black business of an underworld where unscrupulous guys from other supposedly more decent settings also fish...
Ayla has everything against her. She is sixteen years old, she is an immigrant, she makes a living boxing and, as if that were not enough, she must take care of her father who is sick with Alzheimer's. The emergence of someone from her past will force her to take part in a dangerous game of favors, debts and deception. In addition, she will lead to her reunion with Mascarell, a disastrous detective embarked on a most peculiar assignment. Meanwhile, she develops a power struggle to pull the strings of the darkest side of Frankfurt that will end up spattering everything with blood.
ink and fire
To talk about plots about enigmas and books is to evoke the fascinating Carlos Ruiz Zafón. But the thing is that it gives a lot of meaning, and beyond one's own desires, the books have that I don't know what atavistic knowledge, of putting black on white secrets of our civilization. Towards that we head again in this novel…
Greta is a renowned searcher for rare and valuable books, although her popularity has plummeted due to the disappearance of a first edition of Borges that she had to appraise. Suffocated by debt and the distrust of her loved ones, she accepts an unusual assignment: to find the Fritz-Briones family library, lost during World War II.
The investigation will take her to Berlin, where she will discover that the Nazis carried out the biggest theft of books in history, but also something else: someone is murdering bibliophiles, booksellers and collectors from all over the world to try to rebuild the mythical Library of the Jewish Community of Rome, which was looted and hidden by the Third Reich.
Greta won't be able to resist this twist in the investigation. What book lover would ignore the trail of the legendary collection? It matters little that her life may be in danger; What she doesn't know is that this adventure will lead her to discover a truth about herself that, perhaps, she is not prepared for.
