Verwandte Artikel zu The Lords of Time (White City Trilogy, Band 3)

The Lords of Time (White City Trilogy, Band 3) - Softcover

Buch 3 von 3: White City Trilogy

Sáenz, Eva Garcia

 
9781984898630: The Lords of Time (White City Trilogy, Band 3)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1984898639 ISBN 13: 9781984898630
Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

The third novel in the internationally bestselling White City Trilogy sees Kraken on the hunt for a murderer whose macabre crimes are lifted straight from history.

Kraken is enjoying life as a family man, content to spend his days with Alba and their young daughter Deba. But there's no rest for the weary, especially when you're the most famous investigator in Vitoria. Kraken and Esti are charged with investigating the mysterious disappearance of two sisters and finding it hard to make any headway when a wealthy businessman's murder appears to shine a light on the case. The man was poisoned with a medieval aphrodisiac--a crime that has eerie similarities to one detailed in the novel everyone in Vitoria is buzzing about. When the two sisters are discovered trapped behind a wall--bricked up alive--the parallels to the novel are undeniable. With the author's identity a closely held secret, will Kraken be able to track down the killer before they can strike again? Or will Vitoria's sordid underworld finally break Kraken, and his family, apart.
 
A VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD ORIGINAL

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

EVA GARCÍA SÁENZ was born in Vitoria and has been living in Alicante since she was fifteen years old. She published her first novel, La saga de los longevos (The Immortal Collection), in 2012, and it became a sales phenomenon in Spain, Latin America, the United States, and the United Kingdom. She is also the author of Los hijos de Adán (The Sons of Adam) and the historical novel Pasaje a Tahití (Passage to Tahiti). In 2016 she published the first installment of the White City Trilogy, titled El silencio de la ciudad blanca (The Silence of the White City), followed by Los ritos del agua (The Water Rituals) and Los señores del tiempo (The Lords of Time).

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1

VILLA SUSO PALACE

UNAI

September 2019

I could begin this story with the shocking discovery of a body in Villa Suso Palace: one of the richest men in the country, the owner of a ready-to-wear fashion empire, poisoned with la mosca española, or Spanish fly—the legendary medieval equivalent of Viagra. But I’m not going to do that.

Instead I’ll write about what happened the evening we went to the book launch for The Lords of Time, the novel everyone in Vitoria was talking about.

We were all fascinated by this work of historical fiction, especially me. It was one of those books that completely transported you; from the opening paragraph, it was as though an invisible hand grabbed you by the scruff of the neck and drew you into this ferocious medieval world. It was magnetic. You couldn’t resist, even if you wanted to.

It wasn’t so much a book as a trap made of paper, an ambush of words . . . ​and there was no escape.

My brother, Germán; my alter ego, Estíbaliz; my entire cuadrilla . . . ​No one was talking about anything else. Many people had polished off the four hundred and seventy pages in only three nights. Some of us, however, preferred to enjoy it in small doses, as if it were a poison or a bewitching drug, prolonging the experience of being transported to the year of our Lord 1192. I was so immersed that sometimes when Alba and I were enjoying our early-morning rendezvous between the sheets, I called her “my lady.”

But there was an added attraction to the experience—a mystery: Who was the elusive author?

A week and a half after the novel was released, it was flying off bookstore shelves, but there was not a single photograph of the author anywhere, not on the novel’s cover, not in any of the newspapers. He hadn’t given any interviews, and there was no sign of him on social media. He didn’t even have a website. He was either a pariah or an anachronism.

Some people thought that Diego Veilaz, the author’s name, was a pseudonym, a nod to the novel’s protagonist, Count Diago Vela. It was impossible to know anything back then. The truth had not yet spread its capricious wings over the cobbled streets of Vitoria’s Medieval Quarter.

The evening was sepia colored as I crossed the Plaza de Matxete carrying Deba on my shoulders. I was sure my two-year-old daughter (who already considered herself grown-up) would not be a nuisance at the book launch, but Grandfather had come along to help out just in case, even though it was the night before La Fiesta de San Andrés, and he would be celebrating the patronal holiday in Villaverde.

Alba and I were delighted when he’d appeared at our apartment. We were desperate for a chance to relax.

The previous two weeks we’d been working overtime on a case involving two young sisters, aged seventeen and twelve, who had disappeared in very strange circumstances—and we needed sleep.

We were hoping for a few hours’ respite after fourteen fruitless days of investigation, time to collapse under the duvet and recharge our batteries. Saturday was already shaping up to be just as frustrating as the past couple of weeks had been.

All the routine work was done. We’d organized searches with volunteers and dogs, and we’d gotten the judge’s authorization to seize family’s and friends’ cell phones. Our team had examined all the CCTV footage in the province, and the forensics team had painstakingly gone through the family’s vehicles with a fine-tooth comb. We had interviewed anyone who had come into contact with the girls over the course of their brief lives. And we had found nothing.

They had vanished into thin air.

There were two of them, which meant the drama was twice as intense, as was the pressure Superintendent Medina was putting on Alba, his deputy.

People had lined up for a mile under the warm streetlights in the Plaza del Matxete, waiting for the book launch to begin.

The event coincided with the traditional September medieval market. The paved square was filled with the smell of corn on the cob and chinchorta cake. Furious violins played the theme from Game of Thrones. A performer dressed in green velvet juggled three red balls, while a bullnecked man stuffed the head of an albino boa into his mouth.

The square that had once been the city market was busier than ever. The line of readers disappeared under the arches of the Arquillos del Juicio, where vendors were selling pottery and lavender essential oil.

I suddenly caught sight of Estíbaliz, my partner in the Criminal Investigation Unit. She was with Alba’s mother, who had adopted her as one of her own after their first meeting and had included her in all our family traditions ever since.

My mother-in-law, Nieves Díaz de Salvatierra, was a retired actress who had been a child prodigy in 1950s Spanish cinema. She had now found the peace and quiet she so longed for as the manager of a hotel in Laguardia. The fortress-like space was set between vineyards and the mountains of Toloño. The range was named Tulonio, the Celtic god I prayed to when the universe turned dark.

“Unai!” shouted Estíbaliz, waving an arm. “Over here!”

Alba, Grandfather, and I headed in their direction. Deba gave her aunt Estí a sloppy kiss on the cheek, and we were finally able to enter the Villa Suso, a stone Renaissance building that had stood proudly for five centuries on the hilltop where the city was first built.

“I think the family’s all here,” I said, extending my phone to a sky that was already turning a deep indigo. “Look here, everyone.”

Four generations of the Díaz de Salvatierra and López de Ayala families smiled for our selfie.

“I think the launch is in the Martín de Salinas room on the second floor,” said Alba, cheerfully leading the way. “Such an innocent mystery, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The author. This evening we’re finally going to discover his identity,” she replied, intertwining her fingers with mine. “If only the mysteries at work were so innocuous—”

“Speaking of mysteries,” Estíbaliz broke in, pushing Alba as we entered the room. “Don’t walk on the woman trapped in the walls, Alba. The security guards say she appears at night in the hallways near the restrooms, and her moans are terrifying.”

Alba jumped to one side. Swept along by the crowd, she had accidentally stepped on the glass panel that covered the skeleton of a medieval woman, according to a plaque on the wall.

“Don’t mention ghosts or skeletons in front of Deba,” she said with a wink, lowering her voice. “I don’t want her to have any trouble going to bed tonight. I need her to sleep like a hibernating bear. Her mother desperately needs rest.”

Grandfather smiled, the half smile of a centenarian who had many more years of assessing people than we did.

“You’re not going to scare the chiguita with a few piles of bones.”

I could have sworn there was a touch of pride in his gruff voice. He seemed to really understand Deba. They shared a simple, effective telepathy that excluded the rest of us. Deba and her great-grandfather communicated through looks and shrugs, and, to our bewilderment, he understood better than anyone what made her cry, the reasons she refused to wear her rubber boots even when it was pouring, and what the scribbles meant that she drew on every surface she came across.

We...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2021
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1984898639
ISBN 13 
9781984898630
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
496
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
eucomply OÜ
hello@eucompliancepartner.com

Pärnu mnt 139b-14
Tallinn
11317
Estland