The Whispering City

by Sara Moliner

Overview

Barcelona, 1952: General Franco's fascist government is at the height of its oppressive powers, casting a black shadow across the city. When wealthy socialite Mariona Sobrerroca is found dead in her mansion in the exclusive Tibidabo district, the police scramble to seize control of the investigation.Ana Martí Noguer, an eager young journalist, is surprised to be assigned this important story, shadowing Inspector Isidro Castro. But Ana soon realizes that a bundle of strange letters unearthed at the scene point to a sequence of events dramatically different from the official version. She enlists the help of her cousin Beatriz, a scholar, and what begins as an intriguing puzzle opens up a series of revelations that implicate the regime's most influential figures. The two women have placed themselves in mortal danger. As the conspiracy unfolds, Ana's courage and Beatriz's wits will be their only weapons against the city's corrupt and murderous elite.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781605988962
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	11/15/2015
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	416
File size:	671 KB

About the Author

Sara Moliner is the pseudonym for the writing duo Rosa Ribas and Sabine Hofmann. Rosa Ribas was born in Barcelona and now teaches at Frankfurt University. She is the celebrated author of six previous novels published in Spain. Sabine Hofmann is a former lecturer in philology at Frankfurt University. The Whispering City is their first novel together.

Editorial Reviews

09/14/2015
The murder of Barcelona socialite Mariona Sobrerroca propels this accomplished debut from the pseudonymous Moliner (the writing team of Rosa Ribas and Sabine Hofmann), set in 1952. Insp. Isidro Castro, of the Criminal Investigation Brigade, takes charge of the inquiry, but he must answer to Commissioner Goyanes, his superior from the Social Investigation Brigade, the Franco regime’s political force. The powers that be want the murder of this prominent woman solved (“In a country where peace and order supposedly reigned, local crimes weren’t supposed to bring that image into question”). Meanwhile, reporter Ana Martí realizes that there’s more to the story than the police think or want to think. She enlists her relative Beatriz Noguer, a literary scholar whose Communist sympathies make Beatriz unemployable in Barcelona, to do some literary sleuthing into letters connected with the crime. While too much exposition slows the narrative, the oppressive atmosphere of Franco’s Spain is palpable and frightening. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

The Whispering City is not simply a magnificent thriller: it is a vivid and forensic dissection of an era cloaked in a tyranny of silence.

Marc Pastor

The Whispering City depicts a time and place so perfectly that the central mystery almost seems beside the point. A historical gem.

NPR

A powerful voice that thunders with cultural wit and historical fact. The historical-political plot sears with sensational revelations.

Bookpage

One of the most original, dynamic, convincing and addictive crime novels around today.

El Mundo

This is an exciting, original and thoughtful thriller that paints a vivid picture of the awfulness of life in Barcelona, and indeed the whole of Spain, during the fascist years.

The Literary Review

The tension in this gritty debut lies in the detailed descriptions of Barcelonans in the grip of state control, which gains a more brutal edge played against the cozy-like presentation of the mystery. A fascinating angle on an ever-intriguing period that combines the characterization of Laurie R. King’s
Mary Russell series with the breathless tension of Tom Rob Smith’s tales of the
Stalinist Soviet Union.

Booklist (starred)

An exceptional debut mystery. Moliner is a pseudonym for a Spanish and German female writing duo. Their attention to details that display character coupled with the crushing historical setting make this one of the most distinctive and atmospheric mysteries I’ve read this year.

Minneapolis Star Tribune

★ 2015-09-03
The 1952 murder of a famous socialite in Franco's Spain brings an aspiring young newspaperwoman up against the oppressive regime. There's a lot of ground to cover—narratively, historically, politically—in this debut mystery, and after a shaky start in which the reader struggles a bit to keep track of the wide array of characters being introduced, the author settles into her tale nicely. Newspaper people often make for good sleuths, and Ana, from a family of journalists that includes a father kept from working because of his opposition to Franco, is a winning mixture of wised-up, eager, and canny. She holds her own with the martinet police inspector assigned to the murder, and she's helped by her older cousin Beatriz, a scholar forced to sell off her precious possessions (especially her books) to survive. Spain's Fascist regime gives the novel a ready-made atmosphere of fear and suspicion. But the real measure of that time is in the details rendered with the familiarity of something closely observed. Details like the marvel of a family being able to afford stewed beef for lunch, of living quarters grown more cramped and shabby, become stand-ins for the grind of life in an established dictatorship, for the way decent people experience the narrowings of their material, emotional, and intellectual lives. If this first mystery is, as many are, the introduction of a detective for a new series, then this young reporter may prove to be a character readers are eager to follow.

Kirkus Reviews