To The Last Page

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 Caso...

I remarked in my earlier review of La novia gitana , the first book in Carmen Mola's Inspectora Elena Blanco series, that possibly the least convincing aspect of the book - which nonetheless was quite a brilliant thriller - was the characterisation of the inspector Blanco herself. Chief of the specialist murder investigation team BAC, Brigada de Análysis de Casos, The Case Analysis Brigade, the characterisation seemed sensationalist and superficial. She drives a Lada, likes grappa, singing Italian karaoke songs and likes having sex with strangers in SUVs in the underground parking of the plaza Mayor in Madrid, where she has an apartment. The revelation that these quirks were just her way of combatting the pain and guilt over the disappearance of her son eight years previously didn't make that any more human. It still felt like cheap, lazy characterisation. Over the course of La novia gitana , Blanco was rounded out more and that novel brought that trauma back to the fore at it...

With more than a million copies sold, translated into 15 languages (but not English), La novia gitana is the first in a series of thrillers featuring inspector Elena Blanco. Initially the author Carmen Mola was considered a pseudonym for an author who wanted to remain out of the picture and avoid publicity, a sort of Elena Ferrante, but while it is indeed a pseudonym, Carmen Mola is actually a collaboration between three writers, none of them female. However they choose to work, there is no denying the success of the series and the reasons for this success are not hard to discern in this first book made up of short sharp chapters, spiky characters and a bizarre murder mystery, but that's only the start of it. The gypsy bride of the title is Susana Macaya. She is murdered two weeks before her wedding in the most shocking and macabre manner while sensibly returning home from her hen party in Madrid just before it all got out of control. She has been killed by someone who drilled thr...