Eva García Saenz de Urturi - The Lords of Time

Kraken is enjoying life as a family man, content to spend his days with Alba and their young daughter Deba. But there’s no rest for the weary, especially when you’re the most famous investigator in Vitoria. Kraken and Esti are charged with investigating the mysterious disappearance of two sisters and finding it hard to make any headway when a wealthy businessman’s murder appears to shine a light on the case. The man was poisoned with a medieval aphrodisiac–a crime that has eerie similarities to one detailed in the novel everyone in Vitoria is buzzing about. When the two sisters are discovered trapped behind a wall–bricked up alive–the parallels to the novel are undeniable. With the author’s identity a closely held secret, will Kraken be able to track down the killer before they can strike again? Or will Vitoria’s sordid underworld finally break Kraken, and his family, apart.

Comment: This is the third installment in the White City trilogy by this author, which follows the investigations of Kraken, the way detective Unai is known by everyone around him. It just happens that the author has added two more stories to the "Kraken" investigations, but apparently not meant to be a continuation of the initial main narrative, although they are set chronologically after this story.

Some years have gone since the events in the second installment and Unai is now happily together with Alba raising their daughter. Everything changes again with the sudden cases of two missing sisters and a murdered businessman apparently having something in common. The thing is, recently a book had been published by a mysterious author using a pseudonym, and in that book, set in the 12th century, one of the characters had died exactly like the current murdered businessman. This leads Unai and his team to suspect the missing girls might have had the same fate as two sisters in the book... while trying to find out who the author of the book was they get to know the secrets many local families are hiding too...

From the beginning, I was captivated by this story. I remember I had liked the first one and that is why I wanted to keep up with the trilogy but the second book wasn't as wonderful or, to be more specific, I wasn't as thrilled by it as I had been with the first. When I saw this one available at the library, I thought it would be great to finish the trilogy anyway, and I'm glad because this ended up being my favorite installment.

When this story begins, considerable time has passed since what happened in the second book and I can say I only remembered the basics, even though I only read that book in January! Still, I was happy that the main characters seemed to have reached a peaceful moment in their lives and everyone was content with how things were. This did give me hope that whatever would happen in this book would not be as difficult to get over as what happened to them in the previous book.

I also liked the premise of having two parallel stories. We do get the development of the main narrative with all the murder investigations and such, and we get several alternated chapters which are narrated by a fictional character of the book in which some contemporary crimes were based on. The medieval period is not my favorite period in History but since the chapters were short and mainly related to the current plot events, it was easy to read and process/compare.

The investigations Unai and his team are doing really reeled me in. I was quickly taken by the story, the way things were linked between them and with the fictional book and it was very entertaining to turn the pages. The biggest mystery is investigating who murdered the victims we learn about as the story progresses, but there is also another intrigue, which is related to a character who seems to have dissociative identity disorder (or multiple personalities, if that is easier). I think all the details related to these two main subjects were quite enthralling and I can see how, considering the amount of bibliography the author mentions at the end of the book. Also, all the historical facts related to the region and the medieval practices must have meant a lot of hours doing research.

The story probably have some flaws in plot and in how some information is sequentially presented, and reading some less positive reviews has made me think of that, but knowing that some things didn't work out as well, and even including some boredom with the siege scenes some characters go through during the medieval sections didn't detract from my overall enjoyment. I think most elements were interesting and used in good proportion. 

Of course, some things about the main characters were always kind of implied and thus, some emotions related to things about them as individuals (as opposed to police investigators working) were a little too obvious and not as smoothly presented as I would prefer, but I think that all this with the sense of creepiness over the murders and with what was going on with the multiple personality guy simply compensated. When we learn who the murdered is, for me, it was just positively surprising on how all worked out. 

Even with flaws, to me this was a great book.

Grade: 9/10