Corona de flores
» Memorial Silverio Cañada (Gijón Noir) Award
A crime novel with a gothic heart, set in the shadowed streets of 19th-century Barcelona.
Barcelona, 1877. The city shudders beneath a cloud of chemical smoke and lives in fear of a killer known only as The Hope Murderer. The case falls to two unlikely investigators: Inspector Semproni de Paula, a small, paranoid, and violent man, and Menelaus Roca, an agoraphobic, light-sensitive anatomist with a past touched by homicidal madness.
Surrounding them is a cast of darkly entangled characters: Aniol Almarrosa, the city’s literary darling, author of the decadent serial novel every young reader tries to imitate, waging his own war against morality; Max Téller, underworld kingpin, flamboyantly superstitious, always in drag and accompanied by a sinister little monkey; Dado Blokium, pompous scholar and diplomat; and Liberata, Roca’s mute maid, locked in a twisted relationship with her master and keeper of a secret that could unravel everything.
From the city’s seedy underbelly to palace drawing rooms, from its diseased subterranean corridors to the high towers of observatories watching a sky in flux, Javier Calvo’s new novel is an esoteric, fever-drenched descent into horror—a gothic crime story brimming with delirium and dread.
PRESS
«Protean and virtuoso.» C. Brendlé, Le Matricule des Anges
«A beautiful walk.» I. Fontaine, Courrier de l’Ouest
«A noir or a gothic novel. In any case, a thrilling story about the birth of modern-day Barcelona.» Rosa Mora, El País
«A turning point in Calvo’s career. Victorian atmospheres, Edward Gorey like characters and an absolutely fabulous Barcelona. A perverse and outstanding novel.» R. Ruiz Garzón, El Periódico
TRANSLATIONS
France: Galaade; Italy: Baldini Castoldi
