La puerta pintada

Year 1949. The discovery of a body beside the river is about to turn upside down the life of the inhabitants of Puente Real, a quiet provincial postwar city. It is only the first of a series of strange crimes that are going to change forever the life of Don Manuel, the forensic doctor in charge of the investigation.

Year 1936. The Civil War has broken out. Much to his regret, Salvador, a printer who sympathizes with left-wing causes, and that of his wife, Teresa, teacher at a Republican school, find themselves inexorably drawn towards tragedy and death.

The main characters of these two moments weave in a masterly manner a story that is in itself a thriller, but also a novel of mores that paints the closed society of the postwar years, without avoiding the crude drama of the Civil War and subsequent repression.

It includes, besides, typical elements of Gothic fiction, such as the main stage where the plot unfolds: the cathedral of Puente Real, the bell ringer’s abode on the cathedral’s roof and, especially, its wonderful Judgment Gate, on which are revealed, dramatically sculpted in stone, the punishments that await the sinners. In the midst of all of this, an unlikely love story ends up forcing its way through to lead us to the final outcome.

Carlos Aurensanz, well-known author of historical novels, makes an incursion here in the world of suspense that delves on the psychological motives of a serial killer, to bring us a moving story full of twists and turns that seizes the reader from start to finish.