EUGENIO FUENTES

Featuring the enigmatic private detective, Ricardo Cupido, the novels of Eugenio Fuentes are tense, beguiling, beautiful, and compellingly written.

In his work, Eugenio Fuentes transcends the conventions of the roman noir, looking at why a certain kind of mystery always awakes the stubborn desire to decipher it, and the fragile line between innocence and guilt. Fuentes accomplishes a great recreation of the European crime novel to sit alongside those of Mankell and Camilleri.

THE BLOOD OF THE ANGELS (LA SANGRE DE LOS ANGELES) '‘Without doubt we are in the presence of a great novel.’ Revista Fusión When lonely single parent Julian Monasterio discovers an old pistol in his mother’s apartment, he puts it in a safe deposit box at his bank, although it is reported missing later the same day. At the school of his young daughter, Alba, the popular sports’ teacher, Gustavo Larrey is later murdered with the same gun. The Civil Guard are called in to investigate, Julian asks a friend to make a few discreet enquiries, and, after meeting her to discuss his troubled child, he begins a love affair with a young school teacher named Rita. In beautifully polished prose, Eugenio Fuentes explores the psychology and interplay of his characters, and the love story that ensues. Ricardo Cupido investigates.

In beautifully polished prose, Eugenio Fuentes explores the psychology and interplay of his characters, and the love story that develops after the murder.

'Eugenio Fuentes set a splendid example of the thriller genre with his novel, El Interior del Bosque, [which was] highly praised by critics at the time. His latest novel, La Sangre de Los Ángeles, is set to become a touchstone in a new approach to the detective story, a genre that is steeped in clichés and long overdue a makeover… The reader encounters characters with complex personalities, and it is precisely with the unravelling of these threads that the mystery is finally solved. [...] As in a Greek tragedy, the author empowers his characters to be masters of their own destinies. And this, in my opinion, is the main characteristic that sets Fuentes' novels apart from the others in this genre, his characters are not just more worker bees in the hive of society, they question their limits.' Juan Ángel Juristo, ABC Cultural

'Eugenio Fuentes maintains the narrative skills achieved with El Interior del Bosque. In a precise and raw style the author shows that not only things are not what they appear, but that they sometimes hide old quarrels.' Antonio Bordón.

‘His writing style is literary, elegant, almost formal. His crime books weave the investigations of his gentle private eye, Ricardo Cupido, with an analysis of the dark side of remote Spain’ The Observer

Material: Finished copies (380 pages)
Sales: Alba Spain (original publisher); Arcadia UK; Goldmann Verlag Germany; De Geus NetherLands.

THE DEPTHS OF THE FOREST
(EL INTERIOR DEL BOSQUE)
WINNER of the prestigious Alba/Prensa Canaria Prize 1999

'Falling in love with a dead woman has never seemed so possible - or so strange.' Stella Duffy

'A complex, psychological investigation.' Maxim Jakubowski

'The dramatic novels of Arturo Perez-Reverte have created a great appetite for the flamboyant Spanish mystery. Eugenio Fuentes has much of his baroque colour, though his setting is a different aspect of Spain: a remote nature reserve, where "only man is vile''. Here, in the depths of an ancient forest, a young artist is murdered, the first in a series of deaths. Private detective Ricardo Cupido returns to his home patch to investigate, and discovers the artist was surrounded by a rather unattractive group of smart middle-class people who might have been involved in the murders. The tensions of the plot are wonderfully balanced with profound feeling for the imposing forest: explorations of the secret, haunted landscape accompany Cupido's search. The writing has a distinctive sensuality, and the murdered Gloria is fully re-created as a complex human being: an authorial feat rare in most crime fiction, where the victim is so often just a stooge for the investigator. A most welcome addition, not just to crime fiction, but to literature in general.' Independent

'Utterly absorbing and brilliantly translated, this should appeal even to those not normally attracted to crime fiction.' Guardian Review

'The plot brilliantly uses the symbolism of dense forest as a haunted place, full of mystery. A name to look out for by lovers of the genre.' El Pais

'It is rare that a genre novel transcends the limits of it own conventions, to a fascinating psychological profundity and a no less interesting argument. EL INTERIOR DEL BOSQUE is such a novel.' RAZON

'A captivating story which is outstanding by virtue of its psychological portraits of the various suspects and the descriptions of an enigmatic and menacing setting.' El Periodico

'An authentic mystery story in which crime is essentially the pretext for a display of creative endeavour that aspires to transcend the bloody murders, the mere chronicle of events, in favour of a more ambitious and all in all convincing work of literature.' La Vanguardia

'Fuentes’s method of story telling is like that of the greatest novelists of all time … it is a thriller but the treatment is intellectual and aesthetic, and even if we ignored the detective elements we would have a novel that is fulfilling by virtue of the quality of its writing alone.' El Periodico de Extremadura

Material: Finished copies (382pp)

Sales: Alba Spain; Gallimard France; Klett Cotta (and DTV paperback) Germany; Marsilio Italy; Arcadia UK & USA; Inostranka Russia; Alfa-Narodna Knjiga Serbia; Lagoudera Greece; De Geus Netherlands; Marjan Tisak Croatia; Magyar Konyvklub Hungary; Unis Corp Bulgaria. Radio play WDR Germany; Dom Quixote Portugal; Kronta Lithuania.

EUGENIO FUENTES (1958) was selected by El Periodico as their choice author of noir writing in a pan-European assessment of the crime genre. LAS MANOS DEL PIANISTA (2003) was published by Tusquets and also stars Cupido. Rights have been bought by Goldmann, De Geus, Feltrinelli, Dom Quixote already - further rights are handled by Tusquets.