The very Primo Levi He would be proud of the title of this novel that evokes the beginning of his trilogy on Auschwitz. Because, apart from exceptions regarding contexts, the cruelty of exposing the human being in the last instance, to the most evil of the human being himself, as the philosopher Hobbes wrote in a similar sense, justifies that idea of the ecce homo presented in front of the mass to shame of the moment that touches our civilization.
It is true that we are tackling a four-handed novel between Lorenzo Silva y Naomi Trujillo (Who knows if the next Per Wahlöö and Maj Sjöwall or lars kepler, specialists in shared authorship crime novels), but the background of a crime novel always offers a double reading, a critique of perverse aspects of our social structure. It is an unspoken commitment of any writer who plunges into the shadows of any age. If there is finally criticism, a fundamental added value is achieved.
And on this occasion the Silva & Trujillo tandem recover from oblivion the case of a prostitute murdered in Madrid more than a decade ago. Knowing what happened to Edith Napoleón, the girl dismembered in that black chronicle of our world, the story starts with that lump in the throat and ends with the sticky feeling that leaves us stuck to the harshness of our daily lives, under whose placid nights we can commit the most heinous homicides.
The investigation of the case exported to fiction is carried out by Inspector Manuela Mauri. It is probably not the best time to take charge of a matter as gruesome as the so-called Operation Landfill (the authentic Edith appeared dismembered in a landfill in Madrid). Manuela's environment at the police headquarters is not the most favorable. There are few who blamed him for the suicide of Chief Inspector Alonso. It has little to do with the fact that Alonso's final decision was carried out by his own shadows. The sentence among many of the policemen rests on their shoulders.
Thus, in a case with hardly any clues, where the only advance is the discovery of a new member of the victim in the Pinto landfill, Manuela has to go blind, peering again at the incidents that led to her worst moment within the body.
Accompanying Manuela we enter the worst of our ignominious way of life, through those environments in which "the bad guys" take over instances of power and punish anyone who tries to reveal the crude truth.
The only possible solution is to face the ominous or to turn a blind eye like so many continually do ...
You can now buy the novel "If this is a woman", the new novel by Lorenzo Silva and Noemí Trujillo, here: