Already adapted into a film in its home country, The Silence of the White City is Spanish novelist Eva García Sáenz's complex mystery debut. She grounds the story in the family ties surrounding a series of murders that turn a summer of celebration into a nightmare.
During the summer festivals in Vitoria-Gasteiz, capital of Spain's Basque region, Inspector Unai "Kraken" López de Ayala is called to a double murder scene at a cathedral. The victims, a man and a woman, both 20 years old, lie naked, their hands resting on each other's faces, folkloric symbols nearby and bees trapped in their mouths. Everyone recognizes the MO as identical to a series of murders from 20 years earlier. Kraken can't comprehend how the killer, celebrity archeologist Tasio Ortiz de Zárate, has struck again. Caught by his identical twin brother, Ignacio, a police inspector, Tasio has spent 20 years in jail. As Kraken looks into the twins' twisted past and falls for his beautiful but married supervisor, the killer circles closer, while flashbacks to 1969 slowly reveal the startling motive behind the murders.
Family and community bonds frame Kraken's investigation, and sibling relationships, both warm and estranged, are a recurring theme. The proverb "For peace, a Hail Mary, which means... keep quiet like a coward" describes a local philosophy that has unwittingly obfuscated the truth. Set against a backdrop of tradition and revelry, The Silence of the White City twists and swerves its way to a wrenching resolution that will leave readers speechless. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads