Novels emerge from life itself. In a middle ground between life and novels are journalists, with their code of ethics that elevates the truth above all things. Only God knows what the truth is on many occasions. Thus, practicing journalists are forced to adjust reality and truth. As if they were the same thing. Curious performance, not easy. Firstly, for the mere fact of having, even from the sensory point of view, the subjective vision of facts that are also always subjective.
Such a digression to delve into the literary work of a Roberto Sánchez which is not the exception in a journalistic profession that not infrequently ends up leading to a narrative pure and simple, like life itself. From Carme Chaparro but also Carlos of Love o Theresa Old, to cite current examples. Literature welcomes journalists with arms wide open. Therapy or placebo, writing stories reconciles them with that chimera of relating what happens in our world. Because perhaps there are more truths in his novels than out there, in the shadows of life.
Precisely in those shadows Roberto moves his plots with the solvency of a connoisseur of mechanisms, modus and desires, to search for alternative terms for a world that always moves in an alternative way to its apparent future. And yes, once again it is the crime novel that comes closest to explaining what we all intuit but few want to see about how things work, both real and hidden...
Top 3 recommended novels by Roberto Sánchez Ruiz
Serial killers
The resource of the profane character who reaches the sinister world of the underworld has a lot of pull because it manages to place us all in that position of intrusion, of defenselessness against evil in all its essence. If the plot also manages to increase the tension and improve even that starting point, passionate reading is assured.
'Asesinos de Series' is the name of the blog of three young people (Andrés, Marta and Rubén) who live together in Madrid. Addicted to series, they dream of creating their great international success: a reference series such as Lost. Andrés makes a living writing texts for advertising agencies and pharmacy brochures. Marta is a makeup artist in soap operas. Rubén is a taxi driver and, in long waits at the airport or stations, devours all possible series.
One day, they receive a call from a television producer to interview them. They are actually received by a police sub-inspector, Héctor Salaberri. The reason: murders are being committed that have something in common; They are inspired by television series. The police want you to help them find new clues that may appear in other cases and, at the same time, draw the profile of the murderer. That same day, when they go to the appointment, they have to make a detour because the traffic in the city center is impossible. From the sixth floor of a hotel a man has jumped. He does not have any document that identifies him. He registered the night before under a false name. This case is entrusted to Salaberri's colleagues, agent BenÃtez and the chief inspector, Isabel Velasco.
Will you save my children
Nothing like a good serial killer, capable of substantiating and dramatizing the crime as if it were a sublimation of horrors, to captivate us with that diabolical claim of the wild side, madness and animosity. Life and death are that game that can drag you down when you decide to look out a bit to see what happens in the shadows ...
Velasco and BenÃtez return. Roberto Sánchez returns with the detective couple that captivated more than 10.000 readers in Serial killers. The novel inspired by Series Killers now jump to the big screen.
A policy of the group that produces the film appears dead in strange circumstances days before its release. Chief Inspector Velasco and BenÃtez, her assistant, have reason to suspect that they are again facing the series' killer, or an imitator. Are there any loose ends? Who can know so many precise details that were not made public about the case?
Who pull the strings
The ucronÃas is an always interesting approach. On the one hand they have a strong science fiction component, of altering time with what this implies of parallel worlds, wormholes and others. But if we stay with the fait accompli, with the new reality posed, the plot can simply be a brilliant elucubration that invites the imagination to the disturbing and suggestive historical approach of and if things had not happened exactly as they were concatenated in our world. Chance imbues our reality, and we already know how capricious Fortuna and her coincidences are ...
October 24, 2019. Ramón Santolaya, as Secretary of State, attends the exhumation of Francisco Franco in El Valle de los CaÃdos as a witness. Later, from the official car, observe the flight that carries the coffin to Mingorrubio. However, the dictator's remains never reach their destination. The helicopter carrying them crashes a few minutes after takeoff. Attempt? Accident?
The great truth is about to be discovered, one of the best kept secrets in the recent history of Spain is revealed. Santolaya fears that they may relate him to the events and decides that it is time to flee, to abandon a career that has taken him to the Moncloa plumbing through the intelligence services. From the dictatorship to democracy, more than forty years, he was always very close to power and decision-making.
On his trip he evokes the past in Barcelona in the late sixties, when, as an idle adolescent, chance made him start working as a guide for an illustrious North American, a commercial attaché with good contacts at the embassy. McNamara, however, was in charge of weaving the networks of contacts between all those actors interested in having a prominent role in the imminent Spanish transition.
Barcelona bustles. It is a minefield and a testing ground. Of conspiracies and conspiracies. The ideal terrain for corruption, and where the forces of the regime have a privateering license. Ramón Santolaya, an avid reader and radio devotee, will find himself involved in the plots of a world that he only believed existed in fiction. A story about friendship and first loves, of crimes and abuses in the blackest Spain, of betrayals and sweet revenge.
