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Even the Darkest Night

Javier Cercas

Anne McLean

"A gem of a book, easily the best I've read this year. A contemporary police procedural with a literary edge. I was rooting for the flawed, but deeply compassionate Melchor Marín from the first page to the last. Highly recommended" M W Craven

A Terra Alta Investigation. Winner of Spain's biggest literary prize - the Premio Planeta

When Melchor goes to investigate the horrific double-murder of a rich printer and his wife in rural Cataluña nothing quite adds up. The young cop from the big city, hero of a foiled terrorist attack, has been sent to Terra Alta till things quieten down. Observant, streetwise and circumspect, Melchor is an also an outsider.

The son of a Barcelona prostitute who never knew his father, Melchor rapidly fell into trouble and was jailed at 19, convicted of driving for a Colombian drug cartel. While he was behind bars, he read Hugo's Les Misérables, and then his mother was murdered. Admiring of both Jean Valjean and Javert - but mostly the relentless Javert - he decided to become a policeman.

Now he is out for revenge, but he can wait, and meanwhile he has discovered happiness with his wife, the local librarian, and their daughter, who is, of course, called Cossette.

Slowly at first, and then more rapidly once ordered to abandon the case, he tracks the clues that will reveal the larger truth behind what appears at first to be a cold-blooded, professional killing.

Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean

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  • Classification : Thriller, Crime & Mystery
  • Pub Date : SEP 29, 2022
  • Imprint : MacLehose Press
  • Page Extent : 352
  • Binding : PB
  • ISBN : 9781529410020
  • Price : INR 799
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Javier Cercas

Javier Cercas was born in 1962. He is a novelist short-story writer and columnist whose books include Soldiers of Salamis (which sold more than a million copies worldwide won six literary awards in Spain and was filmed by David Trueba) The Tenant and The Motive The Speed of Light and The Anatomy of a Moment. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. He lives in Barcelona.

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Anne McLean

JUAN GABRIEL VÁSQUEZ is the author of five previous novels, The Informers, The Secret History of Costaguana, Reputations, The Sound of Things Falling and International Booker-shortlisted The Shape of the Ruins, as well as two acclaimed story collections The All Saints' Day Lovers and Songs for the Flames. He is also the translator into Spanish of works by E. M. Forster, John Hersey and Victor Hugo. His own books have been translated into more than twenty languages.>

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