I could be clever and pretend that I took advantage of Biarritz Festival last October, where I visited a neighbor for sneak up Ernesto Mallo and discuss with him, congratulate him for his crime novels in which I have plenty of all and rejoice with him the publication of the French translation of the first of them, La aguja en el pajar (published by Planeta Argentina, 2006, ISBN 978-950-491-457-0), under the title The needle in the haystack (Editions Payot-Seaside, Seaside Black Collection, 2009, ISBN 978 - 2-74362-000-4). I could, but I will not. In truth, it's even just after the Festival that I learned that Ernesto Mallo had participated.
I had not missed his novels, fortunately, discovered the other side of the Bidasoa in a bookstore where I have my habits.
If Ernesto hit Malla a big hit with his first novel, La aguja en el pajar (especially with the price Silverio Cañada Memorial for best crime novel published in English in 2006, awarded at the Semana Negra de Gijón, 2007) is that the The author is not a partridge of the year. Born in 1948 in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina lived trapped under the boot of the dictatorship, Argentina's last knee delusional liberalism and the great crisis of 2001 (which has swept the newspaper he ran then). So when, unemployed, recently separated from his wife and a daughter with very ill, he began writing his first novel, there not surprising that he dips his pen in black ink and fully Argentina.
The needle in the haystack is a thriller. Very dark. More black policeman, I would say. Indeed, even if the pretext for the novel is the discovery of two corpses of young "subversive" (two corpses are found to be three) and the main character is a police, not the detective story which is, in my opinion, the backbone of this novel.
Rather, the characters, especially the scenery which is not a background but a first plane.
The "human factor" dear to Graham Greene is very present here, in these figures that almost nothing is destined to meet, and paths which will telescope. Lascano, the officer shaken by the death of his wife Marisa, Amancio Perez Lastra, trapped in their debts and the beautiful Lara, Biterman, the lender who survived Auschwitz, Eva, the activist who Lascano may restrict prevent him from seeing his wife. Characters very typical, almost too the point that I was sometimes hard to believe, for example, the pathos generated by Inspector Lascano (although I understand the pain of having lost his wife). Characters that will weave together the fabric of human feelings of friendship, love, fear, disgust, revolt. This novel is more than a detective story, a portrait scalpel Argentina's dictatorship, those where the yoke of fear hung over everyone else, where raids led to the "disappearances . The needle in the haystack is perhaps for Ernesto Mallo, the first step towards non-acceptance or analysis but, instead, the denunciation by the clinical picture, termination of cowardice and compromise. As long as people can take the pen to wake up consciences, literature can serve to protect the people, cultures and societies.
I want to non-Hispanics will soon discover in a French translation delincuente Argentine (editions Planeta Argentina, 2007, ISBN 978-950-491-702-1), which continues the account The needle in the haystack began. The police and the assassins, the militants and the military, the living and the ghosts of that which Argentina aspires to anything but the boot of the generals, are still at the rendezvous of the readers.
While opened on December 11 last, Argentina, the trial of twenty former soldiers of the Graduate School of marine engineering, central memory loss which were tortured and, for the Most killed about five thousand militants anti-dictatorship (there are about 200 survivors only), reading novels Ernesto Mallo, The aguja en el pajar and delincuente argentino is not only participate in a work memory, but open our minds to the breath of vigilance and resistance, and understand the price of freedom.
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