White King by Juan Gómez-Jurado

WHITE KING by Juan Gómez-Jurado (see Red Queen and Black Wolf) is the final novel in the best-selling Antonia Scott trilogy, best read in order. Diminutive, cerebral Scott and warm-hearted, “bear” of a man Gutiérrez are wonderful foils and increasingly have come to care for and understand each other. This latest story is also filled with high stakes adventures as other Red Queens and their protectors have been killed or sabotaged. Evil Mr. White sends Antonia on a wild chase to solve or prevent murders – the price if she is not successful? Jon Gutiérrez’s life. Throughout, the writing by Gómez-Jurado is superb as shown by the following few examples. After being released from a kidnapping, Gutiérrez feels “extreme nausea, a dull persistent pain in his back … with legs as rickety as a piece of IKEA furniture.” Or about Antonia: “She's a very poor liar; on a scale of 0 to president, Antonio doesn't even make it onto the scoreboard.” Or imaginatively: “… another free tour of the most interesting parts of her psyche - in an open topped double decker bus it goes around the confusion traffic circle, the monument to rage, and betrayal square. The bus is filled with the people in her life all looking about and pointing, taking selfies.” Gómez-Jurado is so descriptive, allowing his readers to vividly picture scenes: “His eyes are on the Gurney carrying away his boss’s dead body. The rain comes down harder and the plastic wheels throw up tiny droplets as they fall into cracks in the sidewalk.” And he is cynically observant: “There are huge quantities of idiots in the world who think they're intelligent, capable of managing the national soccer team, performing open heart surgery, or solving the immigration problem. They come out with irrefutable answers on each of these topics in only a few minutes. Truly intelligent people have doubts about everything and everyone, but above all about themselves.” Start at the beginning and savor this entire trilogy. Highly recommended.

I primarily listened to the audiobook and narrator Scott Brick is excellent. His voice lends both excitement and wry humor (“It's absolutely not a good idea to drive into police headquarters at 200 kilometers an hour both because of the security barrier and the officers with assault rifles posted at the entrance so they impatiently wait their turn in the line of cars.”) to these twisty, sometimes dark adventures (“We always tell ourselves that tomorrow is another day. That we'll have time to fix things until we don't.”). Interested readers should also note that Amazon has created a Red Queen series, based on the first book.