The author of the successful saga of “The Books of the Hidden Port” reflects on crime, punishment and revenge in “The Innocents,” which goes on sale today
He moves through the police subgenres like a fish in water. María Oruña (Vigo1976) poses each case of his successful saga of “The Hidden Port Books” – already has more than a million readers and have been translated into several languages – as a tribute to a type of detective novel: historical mystery, scientific thriller, domestic noir, locked room enigma, gothic novel… In “The Innocents” ; (Editorial Destino), the sixth installment, Oruña confronts beauty and evil, and presents the reader with a multiple crime perpetrated in one of the most beautiful places in Cantabria, its literary landscape. Furthermore, it forces its protagonist, Civil Guard lieutenant Valentina Redondo, to remember one of the most traumatic moments in her life when she is about to get married.
The writer and collaborator of the dean newspaper will be at the Club Faro on October 11 presenting this novel, the darkest and most exciting of the series, which goes on sale today, in which she dissects crime, punishment and revenge, and makes the reader wonder what he would do in the case presented to him. The writer reveals that she is already working on what will be her next novel, about which she prefers to maintain, as in her books, a mystery. She doesn’t even say whether it will be a new installment of this series or, on the contrary, it will be a story unrelated to Valentina Redondo’s universe.
Each title of “The Hidden Harbor Books” covers a subgenre of the detective novel. Which one is “The Innocents” framed in?
I don’t know whether to configure it as a subgenre properly. We are facing a massive crime, which leads us to think of a possible attack, something indiscriminate. But I was not interested in a discriminated crime if there was not a very clear motivation and a very defined purpose. In my books I am interested in the why and wherefore of things. They are not very eschatological crimes. I’m not interested in dwelling on that specific evil, but I was interested in seeing what this mass crime would be like and how it could be solved, and I had never done that before.
Indeed, a group of people are enjoying a day at a spa and, suddenly, they suffer an attack. This shows how vulnerable we are, right?
Of course, and, above all, they are not alert, that is, they are not in an extreme situation or a war conflict. I have located the action in one of the quietest and most idyllic places in the area because what I want to show is that in stillness, in calm, in the idyllic, evil also exists. In fact, the first character, let’s say, that appears in the novel is the water blackbird and water blackbirds only exist in places where the water is extremely pure. However, the first thing this blackbird does is an execution. To survive, he kills and at the end of his crime, in quotes, life goes on the same in the forest and there has also been a crime in the Water Temple of the Puente Viesgo spa.
“You can have a good relationship, but when there are problems is when you really know someone”
In this novel, he once again puts his protagonist to the limit by confronting her with the most traumatic moment of her life, something that happened to her in a previous installment…
Compartmentalizing your feelings and separating the professional from the personal is not that easy. I am very interested in people when there are problems. Because you can have a friendship, even a family relationship, more or less domesticated, more or less kind, but when there are problems is when you really know that person. That’s why I’m interested in putting the characters to the limit, to really see the color of their hearts.
Literary references are a constant in his books, but in this one they have their own role, they give clues to the reader…
Yes. There are quotes from works by Agatha Christie, but in a very subsidiary way so as not to forget that it is still a fiction novel and that it is a fun and cunning game for readers. But the quotes that are most repeated are from two very specific works: “Crime and Punishment,” by Dostoyevsky, and “The Count of Monte Cristo,” by Alexander Dumas.
Why these two novels?
In reality, what we are trying to analyze all the time is who the innocent people really are and whether the guilty people are really guilty by omission or because they really are guilty. Is there anyone who is truly blameless? When I read “Crime and Punishment” I found it very interesting how you could understand the criminal. I thought: “But how are they not going to commit a crime if they haven’t eaten so far in this novel?” By this I mean that sometimes we are the result of the idiosyncrasies in which we live. Nothing justifies crime, but I do believe that you have to position yourself and see the different perspectives of all the characters. And then there is the idea of revenge. For me, the book of revenge par excellence is “The Count of Monte Cristo,” because it is what the reader is waiting for once the protagonist escapes from prison. I was interested in the reader contemplating the action and asking themselves: “What would I do in this person’s place?”
In “The Innocents”, he gives voice to the murderer. Does this respond to that change of perspective you speak of?
Exact. He has reached what he has reached due to ideology, but isn’t he responsible for what he does? Has he had the option to choose? Because, if we analyze it, a person who has been kidnapped in his childhood by a military group and forced to commit crimes as a habit and way of life is not the same as an adult raised in the West and whom he has chosen. Who is more guilty? Because sometimes you don’t have a choice. I was interested in showing the human side of everyone. It doesn’t mean that we exonerate anyone from what they do, but I do believe that it is necessary that, at least here in Spain and in Europe, we get out of this glass bubble in which we are, where it seems that only our reality and the rest exist. It is like a fiction that we see on the news, and that we realize that there are other ways of living, much harder, more complex and without choices.
“It is necessary that we get out of our bubble and see that there are other ways of living that are more complicated and without choices”
Is it difficult to surprise the 21st century reader?
Very difficult. First, because at the click of a button we have access to any content, which makes it difficult for someone to start reading. At least here, in Spain because there are other countries with more reading culture. And then, all the literary competition, because many books are published a week. What can you do to make your novel good, entertaining and gripping the reader? I think the best advice would be not to think about any of that, but to concentrate on writing and trying to make a good story, something that you would like to read.
You have already exceeded one million. Does it give you some vertigo?
It may seem overwhelming at first, but it’s still a number. I continue writing the same as at the beginning because respect has to be maximum for the reader, whether one or five million. That’s why it doesn’t put any additional pressure on me. Furthermore, the first requirement is for myself: I know that I work with total honesty and that what I deliver to the publisher is the best I can give of myself, whether I am better or worse.
Where do you think is the key to the success of the saga of “The Hidden Port Books”?
The fortune of this matter is that no one knows where the key is. And it’s good that there is no magic formula, because if not, then we would all be writing books like churros and everything would become uniform and boring.
Do you change subgenre in each book so as not to fit in?
For me it is a challenge. Can you imagine what it would be like to write a 400-page novel and feel like you’re always writing the same thing? You as a writer have to work hard in each novel, making it a challenge for you so that the reader also has that intellectual challenge of saying: “Let’s see if I, too, am capable of solving the case in time.” I end up exhausted after each novel, but I also have a lot of fun writing it and the reader notices this too.
Where is the germ of each plot?
From some real event, some story you read… Suddenly, the spark comes to you and that’s it. In this case, the germ was a story that I read in a Scottish true crime book that I bought while on a trip I took to Stirling Tower, in Scotland, one of those books that you buy without much effort because, in addition, it was in English. and it was going to take me a little longer to read it. But a case of a multiple murder caught my attention, which Valentina mentions at one point in the novel, and which, as a clue to the reader, the grandmother of Oliver Gorgon, her fiancé, also mentions it in the previous installment, “The path of fire.” Later, when I start looking for mass crimes, I come across cases like the sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway in 1995, and one thing leads to another.