The Silence of the White City by Eva Garcia Saenz

Thanks to Netgalley and Knopf/Doubleday Publishing Group for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. If you like richly nuanced suspense/thriller/mystery novels set in a beguiling place, check out The Silence of the White City.

My thoughts

To be honest, I’d forgotten that I had requested this book when the publisher approved me. When I saw that the book was 480 pages long, I groaned. My TBR list is long and I wasn’t looking forward to reading a long book that I’d requested impulsively and now suspected to be more literary than was good for it.

All that to say: I started reading in a grudging, grouchy, grumbling mood.

And within a page or two, that mood vanished. Eva Garcia Saenz lured me into her story. Though I’d intended to read only a few chapters, I kept reading The Silence of the White City throughout the day and quickly finished it.

Plot

An archaeologist named Tasio is behind bars for the ritualistic murders that occurred twenty years earlier. For several months, pairs of victims had been found in places significant to the history of the city. Each pair was a male and a female, previously unknown to one another, with hyphenated last names; the ages of the victims were newborn, five, ten, and fifteen. The murders stopped when Tasio’s own twin brother, Ignacio, a police officer, solved the case. The cases rocked the city of Vittoria, and the current police investigator, Kraken, remembers the terror that dogged all twenty year olds with hyphenated last names: am I next?

Now Tasio, who has always maintained his innocence, will soon be released on parole. But before he is released, two new bodies are found, and the similarities are striking: a male and female, posed the same way, previously unknown to one another, with hyphenated last names, and age 20. It looks like the serial killer has continued his spree.

But how? Tasio is still behind bars . . .

Yes, the crimes are weird. The book’s opening is odd, too; our unknown serial killer has shot Inspector Kraken in the head. We don’t know if Kraken is alive or dead while he recounts the story of his investigation to us. Every so often, Kraken-as-narrator inserts his thoughts into Kraken-as-investigator’s account. I didn’t mind this, but I know some readers don’t care for it.

Interspersed with Kracken’s investigation are flashbacks about a young married woman and her doctor. These do have relevance, even if it’s not immediately apparent. I felt that this dual timeline was effective, as it helped develop the context for some important characters in the story.

The plot has the usual twists and turns. It’s slower than a typical thriller, and even slower than most current suspense or mystery novels. It has plenty of action, though, and the tension builds throughout the book until we reach the climax. But if you like your serial killer mysteries to be heart-pounding action from page one, the slower pace will frustrate you.

Characterization

As far as characterization goes, it’s adequate. The Inspector Kraken is the usual smart but grief-striken cop who can’t abide by the rules. His partner, Esti, and his new boss/love interest, Alba, are also decently developed, though there’s nothing terribly unusual about them. I connected emotionally with them, though. I felt their frustration at the baffling case, especially when the public makes the connection and begins to worry about 25 and 30 year olds. They demand answers. A solution. An arrest, because obviously, logic be d—d, the killer must be Tasio. Strangers walk up to Kraken and hand him list of their loved ones, trying to force him to give those people special protection (impossible) and accusing him of not caring about the potential victims. They don’t realize this case is personal for the detectives . . .

The atmosphere & setting

The characters, plot and writing were adequate. But the book hooked me with something else entirely: the feeling of it. It sucked me into a particular feeling that made the city of Vittoria come alive, with all its mournful, strange, rich nuances. The private griefs and pains that echo off the city’s public monuments and buildings. The way history permeates everything. How one is never far from the past: whether that’s the far past–the city’s infancy or medieval age–or one’s personal past, the rumors and reputations leftover from childhood that dog people throughout their adulthood.

It’s the same feeling I have when I read a legend or fairy tale, part mystical, part real, part something I can’t put into words. The atmosphere of the city is simultaneously festive (it’s a holiday) and terrified. The setting is rich with customs and legends, superstitions and celebrations, steeped in history dating back a thousand years or more. The atmosphere and setting combine to create a feeling that grasped me.

Yes, there are parts where Kraken has the wry-voiced humor so pervasive among fictional cops/investigators. Yes, there are action scenes, sex scenes, and dialogue crackling with nuance (especially when Kraken goes head-to-head with the still-incarcerated Tasio). There are points where the syntax becomes hard to follow, as if it became tangled up in itself; this may be a translation issue.

But even so, I enjoyed it. As I read, I seemed to be following a winding path through foggy fairy tale woods. Nothing is what it seems, no one is who they seem. Danger and hope feel equally possible around every turn. I was captivated by the story.

The Silence of the White City is recommended to mystery lovers who like a slower (but still intense) pace.