The 3 best books by Federico Axat

In the suspense genre, better known as a thriller because of the Anglo engulfment of almost everything, authors such as Madrid Paul pen, the Basque Michael Santiago and the Argentine Federico Axat they are presented as firm bastions in Spanish of that literature focused on psychological tension as a preliminary reader for the final climax of each of his novels.

In the case of Axat, with its beginnings more focused on a more explicit terror, little by little it has been probing new possibilities of a suspense genre in which the morbid magnetism of fear has its place in its infinite manifestations, under the most disturbing trompe l'oeils . At times even the fantastic, gothic, dark touches are reminiscent of the Stephen King of the last times.

So if you are one of those who enjoys good high-paced novels, which raise chills or cold sweats but from which you cannot look away until you read the last page where everything is resolved, for better or for worse of its protagonists, take a tour of any of Federico Axat's novels.

Top 3 recommended novels by Federico Axat

The butterfly swamp

The novels of kids immersed in the thriller of the moment is something that has always fascinated me. From Stephen King in several of his novels until a recent Joel dicker in his best novel «The Baltimore Book«. With Axat we traveled to Carnival Falls, a place that already points to this author's essential space due to its recurring use in most of his works. A mix between Castle Rock and Twin Peaks. On this occasion we discovered the most esoteric side of this place. Like a black hole that ends up being every thriller writer's scenario, anything can happen and almost always nothing good.

In the assumption of the fatality of the inhabitants of Carnival Falls, we face disappearances chained, with their particular cadence over the years. This helps us to go back to 1985 and then yes, we meet some great little protagonists ... Sam, Billy and Miranda make up that strange triangle between childhood and awakening to love as an impossible balance between friendship sealed towards eternity and need to live exclusively the first passions.

The summer of 1985 points to that end of the authenticity of childhood. But it is also presented to us as the summer in which the lives of the boys will change not only because of their thriving nature towards adolescence but also because of what they will discover about the great secrets of life, death and the disappearances of Carnival Falls. .

The last outing

We look at the end, the suicide of the protagonist. As soon as we begin to read, we discover a Ted who hates the perfection with which his life has been disguised and which has led him to exhaustion with the gun to his temple.

But fate seems to be bent on new plans when the will is only a click of the finger that precipitates the shot. Perhaps that is not really his will. Because the surprising note that he finds seconds later invites him to put the gun away and take that urgent call at the door. How to ignore such a manuscript that seems to be his own handwriting? When you open the thing it becomes more and more absurd. Because the hitherto lonely plan to skip the brains out seems the cause for this Lynch, whom he receives, to appear immediately with an alternative plan ...

But sometimes, as in the best tricks of the conjurer, what seems to happen to us is just a subjective impression swayed by the whim of a higher interest, of a sinister will that seems to want to take care of our lives for God knows what end. Ted's time has come. Once Lynch's plan is accepted, the consequences will accelerate, pointing to possibilities even much worse than the simple suicide that perhaps should never have been shelved...

Amnesia

There are emblematic ideas of each genre that are cyclically recovered by authors to raise new focuses. Recently, and as I say it was just one more exponent, we read «The blue raincoat«, By Daniel Cid and we took a tour of the dark side of doom, drugs, loopholes and unpredictable consequences.

Now we meet John Brenner and his most bitter awakening. Because even though his life had been pointing to disaster for a long time (due to the determination to live everything too fast and concentrated), he cannot even imagine how the bottle of vodka could have gotten there, much less the gun, nor, logically, the body. recumbent of the apparently dead woman who fills the scene as soon as she opens her eyes. As readers we think that perhaps John himself is hiding something else from us. He could be a pathological liar. One of those who, by defending himself from the shadows of his vices, is capable of constructing all kinds of fictions.

The worst thing is that behind his back is his ex-wife and his daughter. And a part of him convinces us that he can certainly be out of all those bad vibes that accompanied him in other days, but then what could have happened? A revenge sounds too sophisticated in that macabre representation. Although large debts of all kinds can be paid off as cruel revenge.

In the end that uncomfortable amnesia has the truth, as in other emblematic occasions of the genre to which I have already pointed out before. And the virtue of Federico Axat is to make us see, like the good magician, that he has managed to find a new turn so that the forgetting or omission of memories has a transcendent meaning towards a great fascinating turn for the reader.

Other recommended books by Federico Axat

the exemplary daughter

The worst of the thrillers extracted from today's reality connects with that parallelism between our lives and social networks. Even more so for young people who get carried away by network sinkholes where image and personality are distorted until they lead to the most sinister events.

«Now I know that evil hides where you least expect it, and that the places where you thought you were safest can turn out to be the most dangerous» 

This is the last thing Sophia wrote in her diary, almost a year ago. Since then nobody knows anything about her, although the evidence suggests that she took her own life by throwing herself off a bridge and that the fact is related to a lurid video that went viral at the institute. Her parents refuse to believe it. Her daughter is not the kind of person who would do something like that. When months later the boy who recorded it turns up dead from a hammer blow to the head, there are those who dare to think that perhaps Sophia is alive and that her disappearance is part of a plan that she herself has set in motion.

Camila Jones, a temporarily retired investigative celebrity, receives an unexpected visit from a local journalist who wants her to get involved in the case. She has no intention of agreeing, but the revelation that Sophia is linked to a fact from her past that no one knows about her leads her to accept the proposal and seek the truth at any cost.

The exemplary daughter is the new and surprising novel by Federico Axat, the master of the psychological thriller, which explores family ties and how parents' expectations of their children can become a dark mechanism of manipulation.