Translation Rights TQE / The acid test

The mutilated body of Mayra Cabral de Melo, a well-known stripper, is found, and the detective Edgar “Left-Handed” Mendieta is chosen to investigate the case. He has personal reasons for finding the culprit. The investigation will bring him even closer to the world of narcos, who have started a war against the Mexican state. The country is a powder keg, and Mendieta will live the worst days of his life. He will need to face not only dark politicians, failed boxers, weapon dealers, and even the FBI when the father of the President of the United States is attacked, but also his devious past that will not leave him alone. As if this was not enough, the reappearance of Samantha Valdés, now the boss of the Cartel del Pacífico, will add yet another piece to this impossible puzzle as Mendieta continues to investigate the death of Mayra.

Élmer Mendoza was born in Culiacán (México) in 1949. He is a professor at the Autonomous University of Sinaloa. Mexican critics consider him “the first narrator who manages a true account of the effects of drug trafficking in our country”. He has been awarded the XVII José Fuentes Mares National Literary Prize, and he was a finalist, in 2005, to the Dashiell Hammett Prize. He also won the III Tusquets Editores Prize for novel in 2007 with Balas de plata (Silver Bullets, 2008).

Praise for Balas de plata:

“Time will prove him to be one of the great names in contemporary Mexican literature... A pure narrator who does not criticize nor defend the novel, but rather tell it.” Arturo Pérez-Reverte

“Runaway energy. In Balas de plata, the language is an explosive corrido. The best possible option is to feel it, to allow yourself to be dragged by its runaway energy, comprable to that of the film Amores perros, by Alejandro González Iñarritu.” El Periódico

“Splendid from every possible point of view. The plot and the vertiginous rhythm captivate the reader from beginning to end.” Rosa Mora, El País

“Mendoza has come to stay because he writes about the crisis of democracy with energetic, suggestive, essential and, at its best, merciless writing.” Corriere della Sera

“The most fascinating aspect of Balas de plata is the extraordinary portrait of his country that Mendoza offers us. It is a portrait that depicts violence as something humanly natural, a violence that conditions a society tolerant of injustice and impunity.” Pedro Justino Alves, Diário digital (Portugal)

Élmer Mendoza was born in Culiacán (México) in 1949. He is a professor at the Autonomous University of Sinaloa. He coordinates seven groups of starting novelists throughout Mexico. From 1978 to 1995, he published five volumes of short stories and two of chronicles, and in 1999, his first novel, Un asesino solitario (A Lonely Killer), which immediately situated him, according to the Mexican literary critic Federico Campbell, as “the first narrator who manages a true account of the effects of drug trafficking in our country”. El amante de Janis Joplin (The Lover of Janis Joplin) was awarded the XVII José Fuentes Mares National Literary Prize and Efecto Tequila (Tequila Effect) was a finalist, in 2005, to the Dashiell Hammett Prize. In 2006, his fourth novel, Cóbraselo caro (Make It Expensive) was published. Arturo Pérez-Reverte has said about Mendoza, “He is my friend and my teacher. The Queen of the South was born from the taverns, the narcocorrido music and his novels.”