It was already announced by the Latin phrase: if you want peace, for peace…There can be no city of peace without first confronting its war zones.
Because this City of peace by Joel C. López is based on the contradictory and almost Machiavellian idea that human peace can only be achieved after conflict, war or violence.
Murder dates back to Cain as an indirect consequence of our expulsion from paradise. And we have been doing this ever since Cain. And from that atavistic idea this narrative proposal is born in the key of the noir genre. Except that today's noir is much more than a genre of entertainment. Because as Joel does well in this novel, we enter into the psyche of the criminal and those who pursue them.
Because all the characters in a crime novel have to review their ethical standards from time to time, so as not to give free rein to their desire for revenge or to contain their darkest guilt and frustrations. The most treacherous murderer always has a plan and a justification. The psychopath ends up trying to express his reasons for killing and even takes care to compose the clues that point to his homicidal reason.
Barcelona, once a literary city, is for me Ruiz Zafón. A city that takes advantage of the Mediterranean's brilliance but also has its dark neighborhoods, its spaces where evil can draw up its own tourist guide to get to know the city in its soulless areas. On this occasion Joel C. López takes up the challenge and bravely takes on the challenge of leading us through the city of Barcelona. Sinister tourism in a guide with the aroma of complex investigation for the investigators, Inspector Carlos Guzmán and Inspector Alicia.
Then there is the rhythm, a rhythm charged with vigor from the intensity and the hidden warning of the possible turn that ends up disconcerting us. Because Barcelona changes between that light so typical of the sea and the shadows where hired killers, hackers capable of anything and secrets that could finally come to light to transform reality with that aftertaste of sinister tragedy hide.
City of Peace has everything, it is a crime novel with a lot of police component, so that we can enjoy that deductive point of the good initial novels of the genre. But above all it is a crime plot in the sense that Barcelona is getting darker as a setting where characters capable of anything meet. When love is put aside and the human driving forces are hate, revenge, betrayal and all that crucible where Cain melted all his animosity, anything can happen.
A psychological thriller that has it all. Because we even get a glimpse of the dangers of the Internet, of networks, of exposed communications, opened up for technological criminals. Without a doubt a cocktail that all noir fans will enjoy in mixed sips, loaded with surprising nuances.