About the book
«In environments where everyone knows each other,
“The reactions, emotions and comments are magnified.”
Eternal Suspicion, by Pablo Alaña, has won the Valencia Prize for Narrative in Spanish 2022 awarded by the Alfons el Magnànim Institute. And although Alaña is barely 30 years old, in this edition the València Nova does not reward young talent, but rather focuses on first novels by authors of any age. Another of the significant changes to the award is that its financial award increases, from 5,000 to 7,000 euros.
Pablo Alaña was competing with experienced writers who at the moment have not managed to be published. For this young Cantabrian lawyer, the fact that his literary debut is accompanied by this award constitutes “quite an injection of confidence” due to the recognition it entails. Eternal Suspicion will be released on November 7. Published by Ediciones Versatil.
His is a crime novel in its purest form that, according to the jury, made up of two authors of the genre with the experience of Pere Cervantes and Susana Martín Gijón: «It maintains intrigue and generates surprise in readers through a plot that represents a journey to the bowels of the judicial system. In the author’s opinion, the solvency with which he handles the intrigue is explained by the reading passion that has accompanied him since he was a child, especially focused on the noir genre, and by his ability to plan, which borders on the obsessive, “before sitting down to “When I write, I think a lot about the gears of the plot and what should be revealed on each page to keep the reader in suspense.” And boy does he get it.
Eternal Suspicion is a novel for lawyers, but not only for them. It’s a thriller of what has been called domestic noir, a novel focused on the evil that we find in everyday life, with a non-professional investigator, Clara Caballero, who is neither a police officer nor a detective, but a lawyer and friend of the main suspect of having committed a crime. Irene’s husband, her suspect, finds her in the garden of her house next to her corpse and trying to hide a knife, the murder weapon. Furthermore, six years earlier Irene had already been linked to the death of her partner. So Clara Caballero, more than defending her client, will have to find the murderer and unravel if the same black hand is behind both cases.
For Pablo Alaña, “this is a novel about appearances, prejudices and trust,” because relationships become fragile when you have to take sides for someone you are accused of having killed. The author has an advantage in a lawyer thriller because he has been wearing a toga for years, he recognizes that “being a lawyer has helped me build the plot with more realism and move through the story with agility, I also think it has helped me when it comes to narrate it, because in both cases you must know how to prioritize the information, measure it and relate it clearly.
The novel is set, fundamentally, in the town of Comillas (Cantabria), a location that allowed the author to play with the key factor of social pressure. A good part of the decisions of the female characters have to do with an escape strategy, as a result of an oppressive environment in which appearances and good reputation are key, for the author “in environments in which everyone “You know, the reactions, emotions and comments are magnified.”
Source: https://algunoslibrosbuenos.com/la-sospecha-eterna
