If there is an author in Spain who has a hard fight with Javier Sierra for holding the flag hoisted at the top of the great mystery genre, that is Juan Gómez-Jurado.
Since his first book appeared back in 2007, on the embers of The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, This author, who was barely thirty years old at the time, began to stomp in this genre of mystery that houses the largest number of bestsellers in the world.
Here is the perfect pack to give to any lover of the work of Gómez Jurado:
The great virtue, or at least one of the aspects most valued by current readers of the mystery genre, is the author's ability to make great world mysteries credible. The Church is always the cradle of all kinds of suspicions about its collection of top-level information, let's say "reserved" (as an example, my mystery novel "El sueño del santo» for € 1 here), and in Western literature, where the Catholic Church still rules consciences, heavens and hells, pulling this resource can always be good.
Juan Gómez-Jurado, who, as we will see, began with great success along those paths and led to many other variants of the mystery each more interesting, surprised with his debut feature Espía de Dios, in which he proposed a game between reality and fiction with the John Paul II's funeral in the background, an extremely interesting plot that ran from the most absolute reality to the most fascinating assumptions.
But as I say, there is much more author in the set than what he has been writing, thus demonstrating a great ability to address various topics with which to present a thriller or a mystery that leaves you speechless.
3 recommended novels by Juan Gómez-Jurado
White king
You have to have something to know how to build a plot that addresses suspense from all sides without faltering at any point, just as happens in this novel. Mystery and thriller waving in unpredictable gusts like a perfect narrative storm. So much so that one wonders how much of a script or outline there is and how much of an improvisation, of delivering the plot into the hands of its protagonists so that they, with their authenticity, guide the future of the plot.
It is true that Juan has an ace up his sleeve with his protagonist Antonia Scott. Because when a writer is capable of convincing us that his protagonists can do anything, whatever happens has a complete credibility license. This is how this author moves us like a conjurer of letters, always stalking us with his final twist to leave us pale, helpless before the final plot blow...
When Antonia Scott receives this message, she knows very well who sent it to her. She also knows that this game is almost impossible to win. But Antonia doesn't like to lose. After all this time on the run, reality has finally caught up with her. Antonia is a black belt in lying to herself, but now she is clear that if she loses this battle, she will have lost them all.
"The queen is the most powerful figure on the board," says the White King. But as powerful a chess piece as she is, she must never forget that there is a hand that moves her. "We'll see about that," Antonia replies.
Black wolf
One of the few regrets that I discovered in some readers of the previous installment of John Gomez Jurado, Red Queen It was that open ending, with its pending questions in terms of various ramifications... Perhaps that's why I ended up falling towards the bottom of the ranking even though I was a novelist (it's all a matter of subjective assessments). But seen what has been seen, that is how it should be to reach this Black Wolf and there may even be fringes left for new deliveries.
Because Antonia Scott is a character with whom many more pages can be filled. And that with this novel that exceeds five hundred, already around a thousand.
Undoubtedly Antonia's universe, enclosed within four walls and yet with access to unimaginable planes, fit perfectly with her particular assignments to take advantage of her research and deduction abilities. That confinement from which our protagonist manages the threads of the case, gives for a disturbing balance, for a magnetic setting...
But like all good suspense saga, the moment also comes when the protagonist, whom we have taken so much affection, must face his nemesis, in the case of Antonia a fear that no one can perceive but that she knows is true and imminent.
In any case, the feeling of evil as such a close shadow turns this novel into an overwhelming thriller. A plot that, with the author's frenetic pace and his management of style that ranges from the brevity of the chapters to the psychological brushstroke of the characters, will keep you with your heart in your fists.
The Traitor's Emblem
World War II as the background of a captivating story. From the outset, in this novel we travel to 1940 and discover how a Spanish ship rescues some German castaways who were sailing through the Strait of Gibraltar.
Those poor lost devils, God knows for what reason, at the mercy of the waters felt in unpayable debt to their savior, Captain González, and they gave him a valuable gold emblem.
Years later, with that special charm of someone who has already anticipated something surprising that should motivate the plot, we find little Paul, who lives with his German uncles after his father died. And it is that vague paternal memory that pushes Paul to know more about his origins.
The little clues that he finds will lead him to a secret that is beginning to link with that rescue at sea, and with the role of those castaways, and with the ultimate reasons for his father to end up dying ...
The last thing Paul thought was that his search could uncover historical aspects of the first magnitude and that linked fundamental events of the twentieth century with a tone quite different from the official truth.
Other recommended novels by Juan Gómez-Jurado…
The patient
A fascinating plot twist maintaining the narrative tension typical of that combination between mystery and thriller that good old Gómez-Jurado develops to perfection. We meet the renowned Dr. Evans, specialist in neurology and claimed by the wealthier classes when necessary. Even the President of the United States has requested your services.
But that arrival at the top of his exercise becomes a martyrdom. Is it due to his good practice in curing the president or will he have to carry out an assassination as requested by the captor of his daughter? As you can see, the mystery of the character who cruelly extorts him and the tension typical of the hours waiting for Dr. Evans present a fast-paced and insane scenario.
Red queen
The greatest virtue of the suspense genre is the writer's ability to maintain a balance between the mystery itself and that psychological tension that points to fear between the unknown or the unexpected.
In Spain, one of those who best manages to keep his narratives in that harmony between complementary aspects is Juan Gomez-Jurado. Let's say Javier Sierra is the master of mystery and Dolores Redondo o Javier Castillo They could be their equivalents in a purely thriller version (to mention a consolidated one and another in blazing emergency).
And there, in the middle, we find this author who makes the most homogeneous mixture his greatest faculty. In the new novel by Juan Gómez-Jurado we find the perfect doses of “intrigue” which is perhaps the exact word to define his way of telling stories, with that magnetic nuance due to the morbid or the esoteric.
The union of the two protagonists of this novel, Antonia Scott and Jon Gutiérrez, becomes, precisely, a new fusion with overtones of a crime novel and a disturbing thriller about extrasensory faculties at the service of great enigmas. Jon represents the paradigm of a police officer pursued by the shadow of suspicion, despite the fact that his intention was always to solve the cases that were put before him.
Tired by what he considers a conspiracy of his circumstances, he ends up agreeing to contact Antonia Scott, a woman with extraordinary powers but who seems to deny that ability, hiding from the world.
In Jon's interested relationship with Antonia, we end up finding a tandem at times histrionic in the sparks that arise between them, but that ultimately manifests as a perfect team to unravel any mystery, as well as the gloomy shadows that hang over Jon, his police performance and his own life.
