I will not get tired of repeating that Victor of the Tree it is something else. It is no longer a question of approaching the black genre with that mastery shared with other great Spanish authors such as Dolores Redondo, Javier Castillo or even a classic like Vazquez Montalban.
What this author has been demonstrating is a willingness to leave his mark as the author who summarizes everything, the suspense, the tension that overflows on several fronts, from the existential to the strictly argumentative of the case at hand.
Because in their stories there is always a case, a sinister unfolding of circumstances. Only that Víctor del Árbol reaches everything, the tragic, the omens before the disaster, the consequences from one extreme pole to another, from guilt, melancholy or despair to the forensic analysis of the evidence. The case, the plot, what happens ..., it is a whole in which the author recreates himself with that outstanding ability to narrate, monopolizing everything in the most precise, subtle and moving way.
The titles of this author always anticipate the great weight of his plots. "The eve of almost everything" had hook, force and even nostalgic lyricism. "Before the terrible years" reminds a bit of that Joel dicker specialist in demanding attention from the title to delve into the most detailed and sublime sum of wills and circumstances that make the lives of the characters that unpredictable plot around the invincible inertia of evil.
Since we crossed the life of Isaías, from that threshold that every first page supposes, we have been paying attention to the details that are narrated to us, forgetting for a moment the closed doors and the darkness of the corridor, but with that concern to reach the nooks and crannies that the shadows protect. Because beyond the current happiness of Isaías and his girl in Barcelona, a past and the undoubted reconstruction of Isaias appear to give himself that new opportunity in a "normal" way of life.
Little can we imagine then the firm knots that tie Isaías's existence with Uganda, the country in which he lived his first days, that distant life that seemed to have left him with the painful mutation of his skin.
But when you have lived an intense time, there are always people who can follow your trail, for whatever reason. The arrival of Emmanuel to Barcelona supposes that new tug of the knot. The return to Uganda tempts Isaías with those morbid strangeness of pain, evil and guilt.
And that's when the contained, magnetic suspense spreads over the plot with irrepressible force. What happened in Uganda between the happiness of childhood and what came after. The impossible reconciliation with his new life, the feeling that Isaiah is no longer the same person. The reasonable consideration that everything can blow up again.
You can now buy the novel "Before the terrible years", the new book by Víctor del Arbol, here: