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A Terra Alta Investigation Series

Javier Cercas
Prey for the Shadow by Javier Cercas
Available on (06-23-26)

Prey for the Shadow

Book 2
Paperback $19

A Terra Alta Investigation Series : Titles in Order

Book 3
#1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • The indelible final novel in the acclaimed Spanish writer’s detective trilogy.

“There is no one writing in English like this. . . . Powerful stuff.” —The Sunday Times (London)

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. What will happen when—if—Melchor emerges on the other side?
Book 2
#1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • The riveting second novel in the acclaimed Spanish writer’s detective trilogy.

“There is no one writing in English like this. . . . Powerful stuff.” —The Sunday Times (London)

The mayor of Barcelona is being blackmailed with a sex tape from her student days that she never knew existed. The price: 300,000 euros and her immediate resignation.

A political chameleon who swept to power on a populist wave, the mayor has powerful enemies. She cannot even trust those closest to her; both her ex-husband and her deputy would profit from her fall.

Melchor Marín, living a quiet life in Terra Alta, is tempted back to Barcelona to work the investigation. But what on the surface seems a straightforward case has its roots in far more serious and disturbing crimes.

With the mayor on the verge of capitulation, a shocking revelation changes everything–not least the course of Melchor’s life. At long last, his heart’s dark desire is in his grasp.
Book 1
INTERNATIONAL BEST SELLER • WINNER OF SPAIN’S BIGGEST LITERARY PRIZE • Barcelona detective Melchor Marín is sent to the countryside to investigate a horrific double murder. Before long, it becomes clear that nothing about the case is quite as it seems in this “sweeping romantic novel in the form of a police procedural” (Wall Street Journal).

The first book in the internationally acclaimed series: Melchor, the son of a prostitute, went to prison as a teenager, convicted of working for a Colombian drug cartel. Behind bars, he read a book that changed his life: Les Misérables. Then his mother was murdered. He decided to become a cop.
 
This new case, in Terra Alta, a remote region of rural Catalonia—the murder of a wealthy local man and his wife—will turn Melchor’s life upside down yet again.
 
Even the Darkest Night is a thought-provoking, elegantly constructed thriller about justice, revenge, and, above all, the struggles of a righteous man trying to find his place in a corrupt world.

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