The days of Mercury
by Alexis Ravelo
(September 26, 2022)
In a provincial city during the Spanish post-war, a waiter with a dark past decides to blackmail the local leader of the Falange, taking advantage of his homosexual inclination.
In a provincial city during the Spanish post-war, a waiter with a dark past decides to blackmail the local leader of the Falange, taking advantage of his homosexual inclination. What he does not imagine is what this extortion will cause in a place where everyone suspects everyone and where betrayal and revenge are the order of the day. Violence and fatality go hand in hand in The Days of Mercury, in which Alexis Ravelo once again shows us the worst of the human being in a hard, fast and uncomfortable novel that pays tribute to classic crime novel authors such as James M. Cain and Jim Thompson.
Alexis Ravelo (1971) is a bald writer who was born and survives on a diet of beers and chopped sandwiches in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Of humble origins, his first novel, Three Funerals for Eladio Monroy, was an unexpected success that has led him to write three other books with the same character: Only the Dead, The Tough Guys Don’t Read Poetry, and Morir Slowly. He has also perpetrated two other novels of semen and blood: The Night of Stone and The Days of Mercury. Three books of stories (Second People, Interior Ceremonies and Some Texticles) and half a dozen children’s books complete his bibliography so far, if we except collective volumes and anthologies, such as Current Spanish Story, from the Fondo de Cultura Económica, and Por favor, sea brief 2.
Source: https://algunoslibrosbuenos.com/los-dias-de-mercurio
