A book a day: Mikel Santiago: The liar

Whenever I read this type of Thrillers, I inevitably remember those magic tricks that amazed me as a child. The astonishment was genuine to see how the magician guessed the letter you had chosen or how a ball under a glass disappeared and then multiply it and make it appear in totally unexpected places. Those magic tricks still impress me, but for different reasons. The manual ability of these people, the result of many hours of practice, is incredible, but they no longer excite me. Never better said, those tricks have lost magic.

Something similar occurs with certain mystery novels and contemporary Thrillers. Before, these stories captivated me immediately, immersing myself in their mysterious plots. However, these novels not only demand the classic credulity pact that we sign when reading fiction, but also require a second particular pact: to allow us to be caught. It is necessary to convince us that the events narrated occur in real time and have not been meticulously planned previously by the author, who tries to carefully hide the threads that move the plot. But once those threads are visible, the charm fades. And I would dare to say that it is not even necessary to see those threads, we know in advance that they exist.

In the liar, from Mikel Santiago, the protagonist wakes up next to a body, with a blank mind and without any of the last 48 hours. While the police investigate what happened, he slowly begins to recover fragments of his memory in the form of flashbacks. As the story progresses, he realizes that his involvement in death is much deeper and disturbing than he initially suspected, and that the circumstances around that homicide involve all the people. I really couldn’t say more about the plot, and here I return to my initial idea, once the trick is seen, there is nothing more to do. By the way, this gimmick Where the protagonist suffers from Amnesia, allows the writer to get all the notebooks he wants under the pretext that our hero did not remember what happened.

They do not misunderstand me, like those magicians, Netflixable Thrillers writers have a remarkable talent. Santiago is an author who clearly knows what he does: create agile, entertaining and turns capable of keeping the interested reader until the last page (a skill that I deeply admire). However, beyond superficial entertainment, I do not find a significant depth or an invitation to a second deeper or more analytical reading. The novel is supported only by what we do not know; Once discovered, it loses almost all its attraction (yesterday there was a sale of book balances near my university, those batteries of books full of thrillers that nobody intends to reread me seemed to me a paper waste).

The liar is precisely what promises to be: an entertaining and well written novel, perfectly adapted to become a successful series to make the Netflix and Chill. Surely generated and will continue to generate considerable profits for its author and will fully meet the objective of distracting and entertaining. Writing such a book is fine. Reading such a book is fine. We are witnessing a good show, but there is no magic.