The Silence of the White City

Series: White City Trilogy, Book 1

By: Eva García Sáenz / Narrated By: Henry Leyva

Length: 16 hrs and 13 mins

A good mystery. A GREAT story!

Here’s the deal… Sometimes writing reviews just goes SWIMMINGLY, with thoughts and words dovetailing perfectly to match intent. I know what I wanna say, and danged if it all doesn’t just flow and flow smoothly.

Alas, at other times? Dude, I just sit and stare at the computer, completely at a loss, and this would happen to be one of those times… Like, at three hours of Staring Vacantly and counting.

And so? Why, the only way I can think of to even START this is by beginning with the absolutely best part of The Silence of the White City by author Eva Garcia Sáenz. And that would be Henry Levya’s narration. Now, I should point out here that Henry Levya and Henry Leyva appeeeear to be one and the same, judging by their voices, judging by a sudden switch in spellings during a series over on Audible. Dunno why the goof; just know that I saw Henry Levya and thought of the truly WELL-performed Mexican Whiteboy. Whazzis? thought I to m’self: SURELY this here audiobook will be an awesome 16+ hours of well-done bliss to the ears. Uhm?

IT WAS!!!

First, to give Sáenz her due, the book starts off with an immediate BANG! as we discover that our hero, the one who will be slowly unfolding the story, is in a hospital bed, in a coma, shot in the head by the serial killer he and his partner have been trying to suss out. There’s no hope for him, tho the town of Vitoria is praying mightily, he totally realizes his end is near, and he’s soon to be disconnected to life-sustaining equipment. So wham, and we’re off. Good, grand, great way to start a story cuz we know for sure we’ll be waiting for that ax to strike, when, where, how, we don’t know, but we’re to be on pins and needles throughout the story.

Now what makes Levya’s performance so neat is that, hey! this is Spain we’re talking about and a Spanish accent is different, night and day! from a Mexican pronunciation of words. So the truly awesome accents Levya pulled off in Mexican Whiteboy stand alone, well-done and all that jolly rot, but here? He pulls out the most Profoundly Correct pronunciations of words imaginable. All sibilants are transmuted into the Spanish “th”, and man, is that to die for, or what? Along with that, he once again proves that he knows himself well enough to not do vocal gymnastics to relay female characters but simply lightens his tones and lets dialogue distinguish between characters at any given moment. He does NOT butcher the women in this story (And there are some really strong, strong women in here!) like, saaaay, Alex Wyndham (Of “And then there’s Alex Wyndham…” fame). He just doesn’t try, thus sparing our ears and giving us a chance to simply get to know characters based on context. So huzzah! Further, language gets pretty flowery here (Translator’s word choices, p’raps? Or was it written like that?), but Levya does not pair flowery words with flowery tones, so tho’ others found the language off-putting, I never did.

Onto the story. Our hero, Inspector Unai López de Ayala, as mentioned, is narrating from his comatose state. Once we get past the fact that obviously the serial killer won, Sáenz immediately thrusts us into the discovery of two corpses, nude, staged, and TOTALLY the exact same MO of a serial killer who terrorized Vitoria twenty years before. The BIGGEST problem, like having corpses turning up ain’t bad enough, is that THAT serial killer had been caught. That was a famous archaeologist whose twin brother, a policeman who followed the clues/evidence, turned him in. The past decades he’s been in prison. Is STILL in prison, so Whoopsie! Either he’s manipulating one of his adoring fans on the Outside, orrrrrr? Dude, they got the wrong guy!

The neatest thing is that a plethora of suspects are offered and, like, I bit at the first possibility and held fast… until yet aNOTHer suspect was put forth, at which point I griped, Dang it! A blasted red herring! At which point, I gave up, kinda, on trying to figure out Whodunnit. I reeeally enjoyed that this was nowhere neeear a Cozy with its formulas and what have you. No, rather, this was 16-hours of (For the most part) well-crafted story that took its sweet time to unfold. With things getting more and more dire as time progressed, with things getting more and more completely and unutterably twisted as well.

There are plenty of really enjoyable side characters who are fleshed out in a jolly decent fashion, my favorite being Unai’s partner (And yikes! I’m not even gonna TRY to spell her name!). Then too, Sáenz adds just a tooooouch of Magical Realism with how she wrote Unai’s unbearably fantastic grandfather. Nice touch!

Come for the great narration and stay for the good unfolding of the story (And stick with it for the bits that shriek: “Oh, noooo! dual-timeline, and I haaate dual-timelines!” Trust me, it all comes together in a nice and sick way). Enjoy the twisted bits that become faaaar more common as murders continue, and be prepared for some really neat historical tidbits, a pondering of architecture, the neat celebrations, and BEES! Plenty of BEES!!!

And so? Oh my GOSH. I think I stopped staring vacantly and actually composed something…?!

Huzzah! And now off to the next review to compose…

And on to Staring Vacantly yet again; heavy sigh. ‘Tis hard blogging some o’ the time.