La Nena - Carmen Mola

Having read the first two Inspectora Elena Blanco novels by Carmen Mola, I knew to expect to be prepared for some dark scenes of horrific crime, but the authors (Mola a pseudonym used by a collaborative team of three male authors - Jorge Díaz, Agustín Martínez and Antonio Mercero) still manage to shock with the extreme violence and twisted actions that take place early in the first few chapters of La Nena ('The Kid'). Without wanting to get too deeply into it, the prologue ends with a horrific scene involving a newly married woman entering a family that raise pigs to discover that some of the family members appear to be closely related to the animals, but it doesn't take long into the novel proper for another even more shocking event to surpass it. And it's a very surprising one at that.

That's because the victim is someone readers of the series will already know. Chesca is one of Elena Blanco’s specialist murder investigation BAC team (Brigada de Análysis de Casos). She's a tough cop - they need to be for the kind of work that the Case Analysis Brigade have to deal with - but on Chinese New Year, the day before she was due to present a case to court against a people trafficking group, Chesca is drugged by a random man who she picks up in a bar, is tied up and raped repeatedly over the following days by the man and two other men (introduced in the prologue) with mental retardation who consort with the pigs on the farm. There is also a strange little girl who occasionally visits the basement where Chesca is being held, and it becomes clear that this is not the first woman she has seen in this unpleasant position.

Chesca however has not been the victim of a random pickup. The BAC team, no longer under the command of Elena Blanco, who resigned her commission after the traumatic personal involvement in the events in La Red Púrpura, are quick to notice their colleague's absence as uncharacteristic and try to retrace her steps the night before. With little else to go on, the key to finding who might have abducted Chesca is going to centre around discovering the question of why, but Zárate, who has been romantically or at least sexually involved with Chesca, is evidently reluctant to divulge personal information about their recent relationship difficulties. 

The personal background between Chesca and Zárate however turns out to be the least of the young woman's troubles and there have been other troubling events in her past. The discovery of a false ID is a clue to a secret life that leads them to delve into her family history and find some disturbing facts about the police officer's private life in her home town, while her phone, once unlocked reveals a side of Chesca that they could never have imagined. 

As has been the case in the previous two books in the series, those revelations and the description of what Chesca endures at the hands of her abductors does come across as more than a bit exploitative. It's particularly unpleasant when it seeks to unveil a murky history in a familiar figure from the series with complex personal problems and then goes on to put them though an experience like something out of Deliverance. But that's par for the course for this series. 

The investigation however is taken very seriously however by the BAC and, as you would imagine in this case, it's thorough in chasing every possible lead. Elena is not going to be left out of an investigation into the disappearance of one of her close friends and former colleagues and rejoins the team in an unofficial capacity. She brings a good balance to ensure that the investigation is done by the book, with no shortcuts or allowances made even for a valued member of her team, although as you would expect, it can be difficult for anyone to completely rein-in the emotional Zárate. There is a also new member introduced here - Reyes, the gender fluid niece of the chief Rentero - who is a good addition to the team, with a lot of character and personality. 

You could perhaps consider the dark tone valid in terms of how the exploration of Chesca's family background and how those experiences could perhaps be considered as insights into her explosive personality as a police officer and sense of justice, but there is no doubt 'Carmen Mola' takes that to extremes. There are worse things happen in real life, you could say, and worse things that happen to women in Carmen Mola novels (mmmm - that's debatable). The bottom line however is that it might be more than a little unpleasant to read in places, but the actual crime investigation aspects are compelling and convincing. At least in that respect you never feel you are being cheated. There is a lot of hard work put in, research and angles covered in cars and solid footwork on the ground handing around photographs. It's not a pleasant read, it is more than a little dark and troubling, but it treats the subject and the investigation in La Nena seriously.

Reading notes: La Nena by Carmen Mola was first published in Spain in 2020. It's the third book in the Elena Blanco  series. I don't think any of the series has yet been translated into English, so I read a Spanish paperback edition published by Debolsillo. I note that there are French and Italian editions however (their titles roughly translated respectively as 'The Year of the Pig' and 'The Little Girl without a Name'). The first three books in the series have apparently been made into a TV series, but I have yet to find out where you might be able to watch it other than by signing up to YouTube. As dark as the series is, the books and investigations are definitely well-written and compelling and once I recover from this one I'll certainly be reading the next in the series as well.