José Carlos Somoza (La Habana, 1959) is a writer of mystery
stories and fantastic literature in Spanish. He has won some literary awards
and he’s author of more than twenty novels, translated into many languages. Now,
Somoza presents his latest novel, ‘Estudio en negro’, published by Espasa (October,
2019). It’s a mystery and a police novel. ‘Estudio en negro’ speaks about
Sherlock Holmes, the mythical character created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
(Edimburg, 1959 – Crowborough, UK, 1930). However, the reader finds in its pages
an initial, embryonic Sherlock, called Mr X here. He isn’t still famous and at
that moment he lives interned at Clarendon House in Portsmouth, a nursing home.
In this city, there are three murders and Mr Holmes will discover the killer,
of course.
However, ‘Estudio en negro’ is a very important novel, where
no one is what it seems. Somoza makes a precise reconstruction of the Victorian
Era. His writing is very visual and with lot of humor and irony. He talks about
theatre, the deductive method of criminal investigation, the mysteries of Portsmouth’s
night, the sea, the chess, the mental illness… The narrative voice, in the
first person, is Anne McCarey, a nurse, a woman, and Conan Doyle himself
appears as a fictional character in the text. Somoza wonders what Mr Holmes was
like before ‘A Study in Scarlet’, the first novel published by Conan Doyle and his
proposal is very interesting. The Cuban writer has a great imagination and he
has a lot of ability to mix literary genres, reality and fiction. At times, ‘Estudio
en negro’ is a delicious narrative and its final outcome is correct, very
suitable to the Holmesian style. This novel is the first in a trilogy. I would like
to read the continuation soon.
Herme Cerezo
.
