The great suspense or mystery stories gradually unmask a reality initially presented as something very different from what it finally is. It is about scratching on the tinsel to reach new layers where darker approaches settle. Jerónimo Tristante he surrenders to the cause of the stripping of characters and circumstances in a social environment made a daily masquerade. Not everyone is so happy in the elitist neighborhood that we are presented with (any resemblance to Altorreal, in Murcia is a mere coincidence), nor is love as true as it wants to appear.
The subtle differences (here an interesting tangential relationship with various articles on differences), mark the border between the ultimate truth and the necessary truth. In other words, appearances as a way of life in a social environment where you are as much as you have.
Characters forced to show ostentation from the material to the most deeply emotional. Only, it is already known that you cannot hide a great secret forever, in the same way that you cannot stop thinking about a pink elephant once you are asked to think about a pink elephant.
What about Jerónimo Tristante and the stories about closed environments is already a trend set in his previous novel «It's never too late«. And despite the fact that the settings of both novels are very different as we move from the Pyrenees to a high-class residential area, we find certain similarities in terms of some characters
The truth sets us free, however crude it may be. And at least, in literature, this premise is fulfilled because as omniscient readers who can go from one side of the stage mirror to the other, at the rate proposed by the narrator, yes.
Thus, discovering both sides serves to anticipate the catastrophe, to know the last buried motives driven from envy, pride, unlimited ambition. In the select neighborhood of this story, we find potential victims of deception in everything from personal relationships to leaps into politics.
Gelen, the new neighbor is the engine that starts it all. She is willing to know the dirty laundry of so many residents of Altorreal.
In the end, the story plunges into a strange terrain of suspense. There is not a concrete case but the general cause of the secrets. Gelen is learning more and more details of some characters who, thanks to his expertise in putting them against the ropes, end up confessing from their goings-on and their corruption to their strangest affiliations.
And so, we enjoy a particular suspenseful plot saturated with strange expectations around this collection of dark intimacies. We fear for Gelen and relish each of his new discoveries in a bewildering modus operandi.
At the same time, the unveiling of that sum of lies, secret half-truths of moral or criminal charge invites us to delve into complementary aspects not so commonly approached in a thriller. Because each secret entails a break, a scratch from that tinsel that I initially cited towards the discovery of a chipped world, of a neighborhood in which houses shine while homes are barely supported on their pillars sunk in shifting earth.
You can now buy the novel Secretos, the new book by Jerónimo Tristante, here: