The writer Michael Santiago is taking the frenetic pace of publication of the great creators of black novels or thrillers that take the top positions of any bookstore, from Joel Dicker but also Dolores Redondo, to cite two prominent examples.
Another thing is the style under which Mikel Santiago gains his space in these intertwined genres that address the dark side of the soul. What about Mikel is the narrative tension transferred to a psychological tension that traps and holds the reader, unable to take his eyes off events that require resolution and that announce disconcerting twists and turns.
The question, regarding this publication rate indicated at the beginning, is that barely a year has passed since it came out. Tom Harvey's strange summer and we can already enjoy his new novel: The island of the last voices.
Every mystery novel, thriller or psychological crime novel must already suggest from the title. And the truth is that this author has also been correct in this first claim. Titles always disturbing, like that of his new novel that I bring to this space today, and which together end up composing a call to the dark, to the undeniable suggestion of the sinister. From The last night at Tremore Beach y The bad way but also The island of the last voices… Reminiscences to perdition, to forced farewells, to lives on the edge and to tragic events.
Own experience is always a good starting point to confer absolute credibility to a narrative. Mikel Santiago knows first-hand captivating spaces in Ireland or Scotland and this is how he achieves ambience and resources of all kinds for some of his plots.
Thus, the setting of the plot on that island of the last voices leads us to the remotest part of the old British kingdom, the last island around Saint Kilda, an authentic nature reserve in which residual tourism and the last fishermen coexist among a silence only broken by the swells of the North Sea.
With that feeling of strangeness that open spaces offer us but away from all signs of civilization, we ran into Carmen, a hotel employee, a character stranded from her own destiny to those distant shores. Together with her, the few fishermen who understand that piece of land as their last place in the world face the storm that has led to the eviction of the island.
And there, all surrendered to the whim of a great storm, Carmen and the rest of the inhabitants will face a discovery that will transform their lives much more than the greatest of storms could have done.
You can now buy the novel The Island of the Last Voices, the new book by Mikel Santiago, here: