Fortress of Evil

Years have passed since Melchor Marin took revenge for his mother''s murder and at last found peace. He left the police force to work as a librarian, and lives with his daughter Cosette, now a teenager. But their contentment is shattered when Cosette discovers that he kept the truth of her mother''s death from her - the fact that she was killed to scare him off an investigation. Confused and disgusted, Cosette takes a holiday in Mallorca, and that is the last Melchor hears of her; his messages and calls go unanswered, and he has no choice but to travel to the island in search of her. Suddenly it seems the worst aspects of Melchor''s past are repeating themselves, and as he grapples with that horror, he experiences the best and the worst that humans are capable of. For while we live surrounded by violence, lies, cowardice, there are also people who will risk everything for a just cause. And Melchor is one of them. Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean PRAISE FOR EVEN THE DARKEST NIGHT - WINNER OF THE CWA DAGGER FOR CRIME FICTION IN TRANSLATION "A gem of a book, easily the best I''ve read this year" M W Craven "A wonderful novel. I look forward to many more Melchor stories" A N Wilson, Tablet "Promises to be an excellent series" Guardian

Préface
The third Terra Alta Investigation - the final novel in the acclaimed crime series by one of Europe's leading writers

Auteur
Javier Cercas was born in 1962. He is a novelist, short-story writer and columnist, whose books include Soldiers of Salamis (which sold more than a million copies worldwide, won six literary awards in Spain and was filmed by David Trueba), The Tenant and The Motive, The Speed of Light and The Anatomy of a Moment. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. He lives in Barcelona. ANNE MCLEAN has translated works by Hector Abad,
Julio Cortázar and Enrique Vila-Matas. She has
twice won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize,
for Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas and for The
Armies by Evelio Rosero, and in 2012 was awarded
the Spanish Cross of the Order of Civil Merit.

Résumé

A father's worst nightmare - Melchor Marín's teenage daughter has disappeared.

Years have passed since Melchor took revenge for his mother's murder and at last found peace with his daughter Cosette in the sleepy backwater of Terra Alta.

But their idyll is shattered when one day Cosette, now seventeen, discovers that her father has been concealing the truth of her mother's death- that she was killed in a hit-and-run "accident" intended to scare Melchor off a case.

Angry and betrayed, Cosette disappears to Mallorca with her friend Elisa. And that's the last Melchor hears of her. His texts and calls go unanswered, and when she returns alone, Elisa can only say Cosette needed "space to think".

Now the former policeman has no choice but to travel to Port de Pollença, where his daughter was last seen alive, and enter the dark, looking-glass world of Swedish-American billionaire Rafael Mattson.

Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean

PRAISE FOR EVEN THE DARKEST NIGHT - WINNER OF THE CWA DAGGER FOR CRIME FICTION IN TRANSLATION

"A gem of a book, easily the best I've read this year" M W Craven
"A wonderful novel. I look forward to many more Melchor stories" A N Wilson, Tablet
"Promises to be an excellent series" Guardian