Maybe anything can happen on the Costa del Sol

For those who regularly sample the prose and stories of Frederick Forsyth, John Le Carré, Arturo Pérez Reverte or Lorenzo Silva, it is easy to find their mark on the novel with which Pedro Lasuén has decided to leap from reportage or journalistic chronicle to the upper echelon of literature. His novel "Tal vez" (Mascarón de Proa, Editorial Almuzara, 274 pages) is a more than promising debut in this range. 

The Costa del Sol is the setting for his story, which brings together new-fangled billionaires, intelligence agents from the Moroccan, French and Spanish secret services, and international crime at the highest level. A brilliant commander of a special unit of the Guardia Civil, an investigative journalist in low times and an anonymous dead man found on a golf course converge in a dizzying plot in which surprises follow one after the other. Stormy pasts and turbulent presents feed the hope of unravelling the solution to one of the most convoluted and exciting police and espionage cases faced by its protagonists.   

Pedro Lasuén (Madrid, 1974) knows the terrain he is treading well. He has known the Costa del Sol since his earliest childhood, before travelling the African continent and visiting some of its prisons, working in France as a journalist for Euronews for twenty years and working for the EFE agency in several African countries, before plunging into the world of judo, of which he is the head of media for the International Judo Federation. In the manner of the classic authors of the genre, he has sampled some of the good and much of the bad that the lows and highs of international politics, especially cross-border politics, have to offer. 

Written with great fluidity, which is transmitted to the reader, "Tal vez" smacks of the first chapter of a saga that is sure to provide a continuity that for the avid reader of good stories seems more than obvious. With his extensive journalistic background, Lasuén avoids stylistic flourishes and focuses directly on the action, on the pure facts, and only goes into detail if it is relevant to the development and final outcome of the plot. 

He imbues his fast-paced tale with a humour halfway between British irony and Hispanic casticismo, a mixture that helps to shape the characters, any of whom end up becoming the reader's accomplice in some of their facets.