The Invisible Guardian by Dolores Redondo

In the first of Dolores Redondo’s Baztán trilogy, The Invisible Guardian, Inspector Amaia Salazar is dispatched to her hometown to investigate the murder of a young woman displayed on a riverbank. But there’s more in these wet, mysterious beech woods than a strangler, and to solve the case Salazar not only delves into the world of tarot, folklore, and local traditions, but into the dreadful episodes of her childhood.

We learn about txantxigorris, basajuans, besagiles, and sorgiñas - there’s just the right amount of Basque vocabulary to give crunch. It’s also a novel about motherhood, fertility, betrayal, the loss of old-world decency, and the creatures of the Baztán countryside.

There are, unfortunately, numerous oddities in the English translation: missing infinitive markers, inconsistencies regarding singular and plural items, tautology, and distracting adjective order. Enough to crack the narrative spell.

That said, I was predisposed to like The Invisible Guardian. I want to read Spanish novelists and was seduced by the Baztán setting, folklore, and language. It was an enjoyable gore-free whodunnit which balances well its superstitious elements with the police procedural. Inspector Amaia and her sidekick DI Jonan Etxaide were sympathetic, and the scenes with Amaia’s mother and elder sister deliciously warped. The love scenes were rather sugary and it seems preposterous that the male detectives did not know what lipgloss and mascara were, but I will be hunting the bookshops of Barcelona for the second in this beguiling trilogy.

The Invisible Guardian is succeeded by The Legacy of the Bones and Offering to the Storm.