Crime mystery set in the Spanish Pyrenees

24th January 2019

Village of the lost Girls by Agustín Martínez, crime mystery set in the Spanish Pyrenees.

Five years ago Ana and Lucía, both aged 11, were abducted. The investigation gains renewed impetus when Ana is rescued from a crashed car in the mountains. She was travelling with Simón Herrera, a local, whose body is recovered from the wreck. At first he is viewed as the perpetrator of the abduction, causing his wife Pilar to take her own life; however, evidence comes to light that seems to exonerate him.

It is a race against time to find Lucía, who is still being held captive somewhere nearby. Ana explains how the two girls were incarcerated in a refugio, a mountain hut, with a cellar dug deep into the earth. Lucía was regularly sexually assaulted in the dungeon. The only indication Ana can give of the location where they were kept are the ubiquitous trembling aspens, which narrows down the area to search by a mere fraction.

Inspector Sara Campos and her boss Santiago Bain are sent in to take over the investigation. Mistakes were made in the early days of the girls’ disappearance and now the two have an uphill task to unravel village dynamics, rivalries, affairs and general shenanigans. They also have to manage the local police force and the Guardia Civil. Hunting in the mountains is a regular pastime and there are plenty of symbolic parallels between the hunt for deer and the hunt for the remaining victim.

The author details village life with great acuity and charts the family lives that are shattered by the crime, together with the relationships that come and go between villagers. The mountainous setting, with the villages and towns dotted around, is like an all-encompassing cloak that is a character in its own right. Monteperdido where the book is mainly set is itself fictional, although there is a mountain – Monte Perdido – to be found in this part of the world (meaning the lost mountain which seems somehow quite apt).

It is of course a book in translation, very competently executed by Frank Wynne. For me the style of story-telling was a little heavy at times. There are 7 chapters and innumerable long paragraphs; this is an interesting and perhaps unusual construct.

I got rather hung up on the fact that Ana is delivered back to her parents (now separated) with only a police escort (although she does nevertheless manage to disappear again for periods). Surely, having spent 5 years in captivity there would have been psychological support to ease her back into the community and into the care of her mother Raquel. Further, if she had been deprived of daylight for that length of time (and 5 years is a long time), together with an erratic diet, the physical effects would have been very serious – withered muscles, lack of physical development and so forth and yet she just walks into her old home, perhaps just a little thinner than she was.

Overall this wasn’t a book that really captured my imagination and it was a bit of a struggle to keep focus on the storyline but it solidly gets to a well thought out ending. Location is great and really captures the dark, brooding feel of the mountains in winter. The book is being adapted for Spanish TV.

Tina for the TripFiction Team

At the time of writing, the author is not on Social Media

Do come and join team TripFiction on Social Media:

Twitter (@TripFiction), Facebook (@TripFiction.Literarywanderlust), YouTube (TripFiction #Literarywanderlust), Instagram (@TripFiction) and Pinterest (@TripFiction)

For more books set across the Spanish Pyrenees, just access the TripFiction database.

Subscribe to future blog posts