THE BEST ENEMY

An intrepid journalist solves an intricate murder mystery while juggling a challenging personal life.

A long prologue introduces Peter Khoury, a 26-year-old doctor whose family had moved from Haifa to London in 1948; he decides to give his life meaning by moving to Gaza, where he works for years at a hospital and falls in love with Azima, a widow with two children. Then the story shifts to Buenos Aires and investigative reporter Verónica Rosenthal as she negotiates her relationships with both her large, intrusive family and her lover, Federico, with whom she’s not sure she wants to stay. This issue is made urgent by an unexpected pregnancy. Like Verónica’s earlier adventures in The Fragility of Bodies (2019), etc., this novel widens the parameters of the mystery genre by making its whodunit one of several plot threads rather than the centerpiece and, perhaps more significantly, addresses political and social issues through the perspective of its dedicated protagonist. A murder does occur—that of Andrés Goicochea, a former colleague of Verónica’s. Her friend Patricia Beltrán, who’s also been shot, is in intensive care. Verónica rushes to the hospital, her visit igniting her investigative instincts. Barely has her probing begun than there’s a menacing anonymous phone call, a threat to her friends, and another murder. Throughout Verónica’s long, tangled odyssey, Olguín keeps the tension, pace, and stakes high. And Verónica’s discovery of Goicochea’s investigation into government corruption shrewdly brings the plot circling back to the war-torn Middle East.

A full-bodied cocktail of mystery, history, and current events, passionately told.