Even the Darkest Night by Javier Cercas: book review

Even the Darkest Night by Javier Cercas (2022) is set in rural Cataluna near Terra Alta in Catalonia, Spain, in contemporary times.

The novel begins immediately with the announcement of a triple murder – wealthy elderly Paco Adell, his wife, and their resident maid. City policemen Salom and Melchor travel to the rural area to investigate. The couple’s daughter Rosa Adell is cooperative, but all is not as it seems.

Policeman Melchor has been on the other side of the law, when he was imprisoned at the age of 19. While he was in prison, his mother Rosario was murdered. He is still bitter and will enact revenge if the opportunity arises. But for now, at almost 30 years of age, he is happily married to his librarian wife Olga with a young daughter Cossette.

The crime scene is horrific, with the couple tortured and disfigured. Melchor’s wife knows them, describing the Adells ‘like day and night.’ In fact Olga and Rosa were once friends. And then Olga has an accident.

There are many French references in the novel, from the French literature that Melchor enjoys to the French name of his daughter, and to the Napoleon complex of the deceased Paco Adell. But it is not quite written in the French crime style, or as complex, and certainly not as epic as Les Miserables, Melchor’s favourite novel. It is an easy-to-read drama with little intrigue, and few plot twists.

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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