The Headless Virgin by Pilar Ruiz

And thriller of high suspense set in Cantabria that absorbs and captivates from the first page, where the world of cinema is the backdrop, the big screen on which disappearances, murders and corruption take place.

The headless virgin It is a crime novel in its purest semantic style. There are deaths, an introverted, uncomfortable and tenacious police force, who is forced to return to their origins, many suspects, suspense, fear and a growing pace of action that kidnaps the reader until they devour the last page, as if it were a a banquet of emotions and adrenaline. Chapter by chapter, he is inoculated with the desire to know and to be part of the story, to transform him into an active spectator.

There is suspense, fear and a rhythm of action that kidnaps the reader.

In addition to providing a fast-paced story to the crime genre, The headless virgin It is a story that has an “actor” as charismatic as those made of flesh and blood: Cantabria. The novel runs, sinuous and enigmatic, through its deep green valleys, travels through its inhospitable roads and its mists, sinks into the snow of its ravines and the thickness of its forests, crosses its beautiful and most unknown towns and floods us with a brave and fierce sea. The author, Pilar Ruiz (Santander, 1969), provides us with a meticulous geographical and sentimental journey, friendly at times, hostile at others, but adhered to a map that she knows like the back of her hand and that she wants to show us without hiding anything of her beauty nor its mystery. Because the charm of this setting necessarily merges with intrigue and terror. Every corner has a use in the plot: Cantabria creates a closed and lurking atmosphere, the perfect setting and not interchangeable with others for this ambitious crime novel.

The novel has an actor as charismatic as those in the flesh, Cantabria.

The last element on which this addictive title is based is cinema, which the writer exhibits with total rawness throughout the narrative plot. Her work in the audiovisual world, as a screenwriter and director, provides her with an arsenal of literary weapons so that the plot becomes a thriller visual and rhythmic, like a film that is read and that passes before our eyes without barely allowing us to blink. The writer pays her particular tribute to the seventh art with secondary details, such as titling the different chapters in which the story is structured with legendary tapes. The language is very cinematic, loaded with images, with concise and clear descriptions, so that the reader does not get lost in vague suspicions, but rather, through her speech, can enter the development and outcome. Nothing here is foreign to the voracious reader. It’s a thriller visual and rhythmic, like a movie that is read.

The Headless Virgin It is a puzzle of names where, in the end, everyone fits together, solving an outcome that allows us to assume new and attractive parts in the future. There are twists and surprises in the script that unsettle the reader and make them participate in a macabre game that grips the stomach eagerly. There are some fundamental protagonists, who are at the axis of the story. And other secondary ones that give the novel its own life because they complement what it wants to tell: the fateful filming of a film in the Cantabrian countryside.

Pilar Ruiz’s novel addresses other themes that run in parallel with the most literary one. On one side, The headless virgin It is an allegation against sexist violencea call to understand why women continue to be harassed and mistreated.

Police corruption is another prominent theme of the novel. The author describes a network of actions not subject to the law, motivated by economic interests and covered by dirty and unscrupulous objectives. The characters who move in that spider web are dark, sinister and endanger the rule of law, freedom and the lives of their fellow men.