As a literary thriller ... in so much better!

In his Girona, large village in the Catalan province, indolent journalist missed novelist, wry, half-soft, half-depressed, invites us with a friendly self-mockery in a full investigation of haunting surprises, a thrilling police precision his indolence awakened by the unexpected discovery of an old historical anecdote 60 years he will not easily reconstruct the puzzle, alternating periods of discouragement and miraculous encounters few survivors.
He will have to search, to document (not as much as me! Good opportunity to learn a little more about the Spanish Civil War and its premises, thank you Wikipedia), decide to write a first story (the second part of the volume ) who will face the essential mystery that the third part will clear.
This immersion in the Republican debacle, recalling abuses by both sides (the beautiful symbol of Guernica would eventually make abstract), the abundance of detail that give the investigation the day and the intermingling of individual pathways to both ordinary and extraordinary discussed are not only a great lesson for the period and the one that followed in Europe and elsewhere, but also a beautiful reflection on the multitude of small and large destinies, they have immense and ridiculous at the same time, the chances that are the stuff of possible heroes despite themselves swept away in the storm of accidents of civilization. The theme is not new; treatment, though.
The construction of this novel that frames a historical narrative is perfectly successful, the more justified than ever articulation. I was surprised by the classic style of this contemporary author, printing may be due to a translation that one sometimes feels very literal. The interest and progressive and contagious energy of the narrator, seasoned delicious humor with which he depicts his daily, do quickly forget.