Bitter Lemon Press | Mrs. Peabody Investigates

August is Women in Translation Month. To celebrate, here’s a bit about Claudia Piñeiro, a giant of South American crime fiction, who was in the UK earlier this summer and appeared at CrimeFest 2016.

Claudia Piñeiro

Piñeiro is a prestigious journalist and best-selling crime author in her home country of Argentina. Bitter Lemon Press has published four of her novels in English thus far – All Yours, Thursday Night Widows, A Crack in the Wall and Betty Boo. I’ve read the latter two, which are both excellent, but very different from one another in subject-matter and tone – showcasing Piñeiro’s authorial versatility. This is a writer of tremendous range, who’s a keen observer of the world around her, and is particularly good at depicting the highs and lows of middle-age (!).

A Crack in the Wall (2013 [2009]), expertly translated from Spanish by Miranda France, is a beautifully written crime novel that doubles as a study of troubled masculinity. It’s told from the perspective of architect Pablo Simó, who’s in the grip of a classic mid-life crisis: his marriage is stale, his teenage daughter is being difficult, and he’s reached a professional dead-end designing soulless office buildings. As if that wasn’t enough, he’s plagued by memories of his involvement in a crime, which began innocuously with a complaint about a crack in a wall.

Piñeiro offers us a wry look at Simó’s inner life (when you start calculating how many thousands of days you’ve been married, you know you’re in trouble) – one that doubles as a thoughtful critique of capitalism. An aspect of the novel I particularly liked was that it surprised me: I thought I knew exactly where the story was heading, but the last quarter of the narrative took a stylish turn that led to a rather unexpected conclusion. Architecture buffs are also bound to enjoy a tour of some of Buenos Aires’ Art Nouveau treasures in the novel’s middle section.