Translation Rights TQE / One on One

Everyday, from his window, Samuel watches as a woman drops off her two children at the bus stop. He is so fascinated by her that, one afternoon when he cannot be at his window to observe her, he leaves his camera programmed to take pictures of her picking up the children. Later, when he looks through the pictures, he not only sees his platonic love, but also an unexpected event that has been photographed. That day, on that corner, a group of teenagers provokes one of the neighbour’s dogs, which manages to jump over the fence to attack and end up killing one of them. Samuel decides to hide the pictures and, overcoming his shyness, ends up approaching the woman. Her name is Marina, she is recently separated, and the daughter of a high-ranking military, Captain Olmedo, who is in charge of dismantling the city’s military headquarters. Olmedo, a strict man who likes to do his job right, ends up dead in his house, with a bullet, from his own gun, through his chest. His daughter Marina does not believe the official version of the suicide and she hires Cupido, a peaceful detective who will discover hidden secrets as well as the tense relationships of those that surround them. He will investigate his military colleagues, his daughter’s ex-husband, and even the anaesthetist who cared for his wife during her plastic surgery. There are reasons that make all of them suspects.

Fuentes makes a sociological portrait of the present, and analyses the secret reasons that may push one to commit murder.

‘A los detectives novelescos hay que unir el nombre de Ricardo Cupido, creado por el escritor cacereño Eugenio Fuentes, afianzado en una modalidad novelesca cuyos resortes utiliza con destreza.’
Ricardo Senabre, El Cultural on Las manos del Pianista

Eugenio Fuentes was born in Montehermoso (Cáceres, Spain) in 1958. His novels have been awarded with the prizes Extremadura a la Creación and IX Alba/Prensa Canaria (this latter prize for El interior del bosque). He is the author of a collection of short stories, Vías muertas (Dead Tracks, 1997), and of a book of literary essays, La mitad de Occidente (Half of the West, 2003). Fuentes, however, finds himself among the Spanish crime fiction writers with international projection thanks to his private investigator, Ricado Cupido, the main character in his series of novels: La sangre de los ángeles (The Blood of Angels, 2001), Las manos del pianista (The Hands of the Pianist), Cuerpo a Cuerpo (One on One – Brigada 21 Prize to the best crime fiction novel written in Spanish in 2008), El interior del bosque (Inside the Forest), and Contrarreloj. Tusquets Editores has also published Venas de nieve (Veins of Snow), a brilliantly narrated story about the fight against fatality.