The self-publishing option (via amazon for example) is already a reference for every budding writer, and I mean budding at least in terms of dissemination, since quality is in abundance in many cases, as was seen in regard to to the protagonist of this entry: Eva Garcia Saenz.
The point is that since self-publishing, a percentage of lucky people have come out who end up reaching that elitist publishing world that thrives on the best sellers of this and other platforms. A very comfortable and effective option for publishers who seem to park the task of their critics and advisors for the direct opinion of the public.
Because there is no better judge than the readers to determine when a book works and can end up working even better under the corresponding publishing label. In the case of Eva García Sáenz, the jump propelled her to the renowned publishing house La Esfera de los libros in the first instance, later going to Espasa and ultimately ending up at Planeta.
All this to explain that Eva was one of those self-published authors who, based on quality and interesting proposals, captivated readers and later publishers. To such an extent that, together with Dolores Redondo, forms the tandem of Spanish bestseller writers of the noir genre. Although in the case of Eva, gentlemen, do not leave yet because there is still more. Thrillers, investigation and also historical fictions. A pan-literary mission that of Eva García Sáenz…
Top 3 recommended novels by Eva García Sáenz
The angel of the city
It is what Venice has if you are able to abstract yourself from tourism. Each small street and square offers a glimpse between the melancholic, the decadent and a hint of suggestive mystery immersed in the rising mist of its canals. A perfect place for Kraken to guide us on a visit to the city of canals that is as fascinating as it is shocking.
A splendid and decadent palazzo burns on a small Venetian island where a meeting of the League of Antiquarian Booksellers is being held. The bodies of the guests, all known to Kraken, do not appear in the rubble, and it is suspected that his mother, Ithaca, was involved in the fire that happened in identical circumstances decades ago.
Meanwhile, in Vitoria, Inspector Estíbaliz investigates a case that may hold the keys to the robbery that ended the life of Kraken's father. But Unai is reluctant to return to active research and feels that he must choose between finding what happened to his parents or the family he has created with Alba and her daughter Deba.
A walk through a Venice where the legends and the disturbing figure of the Angel of the city, half patron, half demon, pull the strings of a dizzying plot full of love for art and the search for one's own identity.
Aquitaine
The ladies of the Spanish thriller move alternately in search of the best seller that always convinces the most impatient readers. For more clues, both ladies are awarded both Planet Awards (Let's not be naive either, with its undeniable concession to the commercial for greater security in sales). So when it is not Dolores Redondo who presents a new novel is Eva Garcia Saenz who lashes out with a new and disturbing plot that this time acquires even greater plot flights.
The result of this competition is precisely that, the search for the round plot. An impossible mission that nevertheless serves as a creative horizon, and that leads to novels that are increasingly sophisticated in substance and form, in documentation and twists, in action, mysteries and feverish suspense. Just what this "Aquitaine" is, a region made into a novel with fascinating esoteric touches from when Europe advanced immersed in the shadows of the punishment of religion and the blood of constant wars.
1137. The Duke of Aquitaine - the most coveted region of France - appears dead in Compostela. The body is colored blue and marked with the "blood eagle", an ancient Norman torture. His daughter Eleanor decides to take revenge and for this she marries the son of whom she believes her murderer: Luy VI el Gordo, King of France.
But the king himself dies during the wedding under the same circumstances. Eleanor and Luy VII will try to find out, together with the Aquitanian cats - the epic spies of the dukes - who wants the inexperienced kings on the throne.
Decades before the death of the Duke of Aquitaine, an unnamed boy is abandoned in a forest by his five mothers. Perhaps a monster, or perhaps a saint, the little survivor will end up becoming one of the most exceptional men of medieval Europe.
The black book of hours
As a saga progresses, the commitment of the author on duty increases. But when a story is good and its characters become so true, each installment is a reunion that of course will require its share of sweating, as that one would say, above inspiration, but that already has psychological profiles well done and framed by where to throw in case of emergency due to blockage.
Something like this will happen with an Eva García Sáenz de Urturi because each new installment of Kraken gains in dizzying pace, suspense and that dark point that every thriller achieves as the protagonist ends up more and more focused on the eye of the hurricane among so many closed cases but with their pending issues.
This is a disturbing continuation for the famous trilogy started with "The Silence of the White City". Because once that psychological threshold of the trilogy has been overcome, the author breaks free and Kraken is unleashed. Or rather the circumstances are out of control around the figure of him...
What if your mother was the best forger of ancient books in history? Someone who's been dead forty years can't be kidnapped and certainly can't bleed.
Vitoria, 2022. Former inspector Unai López de Ayala —alias Kraken— receives an anonymous call that will change what he thinks he knows about his family past: he has one week to find the legendary Black Book of Hours, an exclusive bibliographical jewel, if not, his mother, who has rested in the cemetery for decades, will die.
How is this possible? A race against time between Vitoria and the Madrid of bibliophiles to trace the most important criminal profile of his life, one capable of changing the past, forever. My name is Unai. They call me Kraken. Your hunt ends here, mine begins here.
Other recommended books by Eva García Sáenz…
The water rites
The trade is being won. As good as Eva was, her ability to improve is noticeable in each new story she presents to us. This latest novel, a continuation of the saga The White City, reaches a level in its structure and its plot of great feather.
Summary: The mysterious serial killer of this installment follows the guidelines of the Triple Death, a Celtic initiatory rite imbued in the shadows of all macabre practices lost in the mists of time. This practice, like many others, that could be carried out, or not, in the Iberian Peninsula during pre-Roman periods. The only testimonies in this regard date from several centuries later.
In the Middle Ages someone ended up putting black on white what until that moment ran from mouth to mouth as an ancient memory. Whether they were true or not, what really happens in the novel is that the Police Inspector Unai López de Ayala he is in charge of the rugged case that brings these macabre customs of offering to the gods to our days.
Unai will have to find out what is behind this cruelty in death, staged with such macabre theatricalization. Of course, like any good classic-style thriller, only at the end can the reader tie up the dots, never loose in the plot but buried to achieve that effect of absolute involvement of the reader, of making him want to know more and more to find explanations to that manifest form of evil that threatens the protagonists themselves.
The characters of the novel, closely related to the first part, continue to maintain that verisimilitude in each and every one of their acts, provoking in the reader that mimicry that, in addition to capturing the knot of the plot itself, hooks so that each scene feels authentically lived. If to all this we add that recognition of the nearby environment: Vitoria, Cantabria ... Everything becomes very very close.
Passage to Tahiti
This book has that aroma of rarity within the line that Eva moves in her powerful and fresh novels. And the rarities of every creator have a double reading: capacity for variation and a greater thematic offer for readers.
All this is good news, so this novel must be included among the most noteworthy in the recent but brilliant career of the author.
Summary: Two Mallorcan brothers and the daughter of an English consul founded the empire of cultured pearls in Tahiti in 1890. 1890. Bastian and Hugo Fortuny leave for Tahiti in search of an opportunity after losing their job as glassblowers in their Native Mallorca.
During the journey they meet Laia Kane, the daughter of a corrupt English consul in Menorca who has been banished to the island of Polynesia. This meeting will mark the lives of the Fortuny brothers and Laia forever. 1930.
Denis Fortuny, the heir to the luxury pearl empire in Manacor, decides to travel to Tahiti to find out the mystery behind his first years of life. An epic story of love, overcoming, family ties and secrets set against the backdrop of colonial Tahiti and the fascinating origin of cultured pearls.
The silence of the white city
Vitoria as the setting for a fast-paced crime novel that abstracts you as a reader of everything that surrounds you. The intensity is not lowered at any time, the special discordant symphony of its main characters, those who are dedicated to solving crimes creates a very special atmosphere of clashes and at the same time of respect and admiration.
An amalgamation of feelings about the sinisterness of homicide as sustenance for wicked minds that you feel close, like shadows ...
Summary: Tasio Ortiz de Zárate, the brilliant archaeologist convicted of the murders that terrorized Vitoria two decades ago, is about to be released from prison when the crimes resume.
In the Old Cathedral, a twenty-year-old couple is found dead from bee stings to the throat. But they will only be the first. Unai López de Ayala, a young expert in criminal profiles, is obsessed with preventing crimes, a personal tragedy does not allow him to face the case as one more.
His methods unnerve Alba, the Deputy Commissioner, with whom he maintains an ambiguous relationship marked by crimes... but time is running against him and the threat lurks around any corner. Who will be next? An absorbing crime novel that mixes mythology and legends, archeology and family secrets. Elegant. complex. Hypnotic.
