THE NEW NOVEL BY ARTURO PÉREZ-REVERTE

An impossible crime. An unexpected detective.

It is not a challenge between the killer and the detective, but an intelligence duel between the author and the reader.

―A policeman would be needed ―someone suggested―. A detective.
―We have one ―Foxá said.
―Everyone followed the direction of his gaze.
―That’s ridiculous ―I protested―. Have you gone mad?
―You were Sherlock Holmes.
―No one was Sherlock Holmes. That detective never existed. He is a literary invention.
―Which you embodied admirably.
―But it was in the movies. It had nothing to do with real life. I’m just an actor.
They looked at me hopefully, and the truth is that I myself began to get into the situation, as if the lights had just been turned on and I heard the soft murmur of a camera rolling. Even so, I decided to remain silent, fingers crossed under my chin. I hadn’t enjoyed myself so much since I filmed The Hound of the Baskervilles.

June 1960. A storm keeps nine people isolated on the idyllic island of Utakos, off Corfu, staying at the small local hotel. Nothing foreshadows what is about to happen: Edith Mander, a discreet English tourist, is found dead in the beach pavilion. What seems like a suicide reveals imperceptible clues to anyone except Hopalong Basil, a fading actor who once portrayed the most famous detective of all time on screen. No one like him, used to applying Sherlock Holmes’s deductive skills in the movies, can unravel what this classic locked-room mystery truly hides. On an island from which no one can leave and to which no one can arrive, inevitably everyone will end up becoming suspects in a fascinating puzzle novel where detective literature astonishingly blends with life.

Critics have said:
“A magnificent, complete, well-rounded book that fully meets all the demands of the genre.”
Santos Sanz Villanueva, El Cultural

“A perfect book, written with a scalpel.”
Karina Sainz Borgo, ABC

“The author is the one who enjoys himself the most [and] approaches the crime as one of the fine arts, following De Quincey. [...] Fun, evocative, a game, a theory.”
Raúl del Pozo, El Mundo

“A very personal twist on the character invented by Conan Doyle and his way of investigating.”
Jacinto Antón, El País

“Just thinking about his hypothetical farewell is like striking literature.”
Jesús García Calero, ABC

“A writer who enjoys doing his work. Pérez-Reverte challenges the reader on every page. [...] An intelligence duel.”
RTVE

“The reader is given the responsibility to read the book as if they were writing it, perhaps with the same intensity as its author, intrigued by the novelist’s skill. [...] It is a novel, naturally, but it is also an inquiry into writing itself as Pérez-Reverte understands it.”
Juan Cruz, El Periódico

“A reflection on the passage of time, the mark of wounds, and the melancholy of a time when education, elegance, and intelligence still mattered and had a clear weight in society.”
Javier Ors, La Razón

“Reverte plays again; he returns more than ever as that homo ludens we missed so much [...] and ends up writing (again) a classic.”
María José Solano, Zenda