If it is a question of labeling or defining currents, then it is done. In the end, it is no more than a resource inherent to our condition and our will to control and organize.
It is worth this roll to point to the generational and thematic harmony of several authors of generation X (nothing cooler than belonging to this select group with evocations of strange powers. Babyboomers grouped between the 60s and the 80s).
In that generation is Ricardo Alia like Michael Santiago, Paul pen or even the magisterial Victor of the Tree y John Gomez Jurado. And all of them, together with many others, cultivate dark genres, from thriller to detective and mystery. And all that ends up sounding to me like series and emerging cultural references in the shared eighties. Except that the grace resides in, beyond the wink of those of us who are X, reaching the whole world with its intense plots. And Ricardo AlÃa does it very well.
Top 3 recommended novels by Ricardo AlÃa
The poisoned pawn
Chess and its literary and even metaphysical power. In its squares, eternity is sensed as an unattainable progression. Symbols and destinations are represented in his figures.
If you will know Perez Reverte…, But Ricardo also knows chess as something similar to religion. And every believer ends up returning to the board even to locate a novel. 2003: Arturo Muñoz is a chess Grandmaster who faces the worst challenge of his life. A serial killer nicknamed Castor has challenged him to a game in London, in which each captured piece implies the death of innocents.
1970: The second plot takes place in the seventies and recounts episodes from Arturo's childhood and past in Monroca, a town in Extremadura, and the discovery of his extraordinary talent for chess. 1937: Ander Sukalde, a Basque boy, is sent to England by his mother to protect him from Franco's reprisals against his father, an activist against the regime. The three stories will come together in unexpected ways until they reach the unexpected ending.
The sign of the dragon
In the end, the west and the east are not that far. Both govern their destinations with 12 animals. Here the Greek zodiac and there his particular zoo. In one way or another a criminal can always find a good year to kill, to reflect his work also moved by the passing of the times set by the fauna he touches. Here begins a trilogy by Ricardo Alia, haunting as any good police thriller should be. January 2012, begins the Year of the Dragon, the only mythological animal in the Chinese Zodiac, representing wisdom, power and wealth.
After ETA announces the definitive cessation of its armed activity, life in the idyllic city of San Sebastián runs serene and without serious crimes. But the situation drastically changes when the decapitated body of a young high school student at the Faculty of Chemical Sciences is found. The investigation falls to Max Medina, homicide inspector of the Ertzaintza, whose strong personality will clash with that of a new recently graduated colleague, Erika López, and with that of the scientist's agent Joshua O'Neill. The crimes will take place in the Year of the Dragon, a sign prone to natural catastrophes and tragic events.
The serpent's flight
The truth is that San Sebastián well deserves a series of novels. For the beauty of its urban setting as an enchanted place, for its spectacular orography and for the contrasts and the struggle between the sea and the rock that borders the city beyond its beaches. Ricardo AlÃa knew how to pay a good tribute to his city.
May 2013, the Year of the Snake, the most ambitious sign of the Zodiac that represents cunning, rancor and revenge. More than a year has passed since the case of the Chemical Murderer shook the city of San Sebastián. Spring, the natural season of the Serpent, has not started well for the Ertzaintza, which faces the disappearance of two girls who seem to have vanished without a trace. To complicate matters even more, a chemistry student is found murdered - naked and shot in the head - on a sculpture in the Chillida-Leku Museum.
The enormous concern of Max Medina, who knew the victim, increases when his partner Erika López is affected by a dramatic event that turns her whole life upside down, and even makes her a suspect in a crime. Murders, kidnappings, extortion and secret agents make an appearance in the Year of the Serpent, the only sign along with the Dragon that has the virtue of being reborn from its ashes, shedding its skin and having several lives.
