Carmen Mola is the pseudonym of three writers and screenwriters Jorge Diaz, Antonio Mercero, and Augustin Martinez, who revealed their identities with great sensation in the award ceremony of the 2021 Planeta Prize, one of the most important awards at European level. Until that moment they were considered the Spanish “Elena Ferrante”.. The book entitled was released in 2023 The beast, which had a good response from the public. It has now been published The gypsy bride (Salani, 2024, trans. M. Sottini), which recounts the first case that inspector Elena Blanco has to deal with.
Who is Elena Blanco? She is a female inspector in Madrid, in a special team of investigators. She is a well-groomed, strong woman with a confident and determined attitude, she has a worry that comes from her past, which devours her and opens ancient wounds.
He suffers to the point of having installed a digital camera on the balcony of his house which continuously takes a disproportionate number of photographs in sequence:
Elena struggles between the desire to go to bed and sleep and what she considers her true duty: checking the photographs, several thousand since she last did it that Sunday when she took the camera from the balcony. She’s used to it, she looks at them from twenty-five to twenty-five and then deletes them. Occasionally she keeps some aside because there is something that amuses her: a kissing couple, a child with a balloon, a woman with a particular face… but what she is looking for never appears, a pockmarked face that she has only seen once, for a couple of seconds, eight years ago. She is afraid of forgetting that face of hers and not being able to recognize her if she ever meets her.
Why does he do it? What is he looking for so eagerly?
Now she is dealing with the discovery of an excellent corpse, called “the gypsy bride”, because the woman found dead has:
He has a tattoo on his right shoulder blade, not very noticeable. A beautiful butterfly, colored red, green, blue and black. (…) Since they don’t have a name for her, they call her the gypsy bride, because of her features. Buendia points out three small holes in her skull joined by a circle-shaped cut. (…) The cut is coarse and superficial, perhaps a sharp knife or a cutter, it seems to serve only to join the incisions or to indicate where they had to be made. To make the holes they used an electric drill, a small one, very precise. There are worms inside.
Who could ever carry out such a brutal murder and why? Furthermore, as the investigations continue, a disconcerting truth emerges: the deceased had a sister, who also died in similar ways seven years earlier. However, the culprit at the time was arrested and is still in prison. At that time? Is there perhaps a murderer who emulates the violent deeds of a very deviant mind?
A read of undisputed charm, very truculent in the descriptions of the scenes and more. Therefore a genre reading for strong palates.
A novel with a solid narrative structure, written with precise, dry and strong language. The result is a hard-hitting read, not always easy to understand. Suitable for those who love violent and bloody thrillers.
Perhaps The gypsy bride by Carmen Mola is the first volume of what will be destined to be a successful series? Of course it is tragic and gruesome, but it also has intriguing and original characters, described with narrative detail.
