Black Corner: The Value of Truth

“My job is to go to places where people die. I pack my bags, talk to the survivors, write their stories, and then go home and wait for the next catastrophe. I never have to wait too long.” With such a statement of life and vocation, Filipino journalist Patricia Evangelista expresses her dismay, having launched this chronicle months ago with this chronicle of the war on drugs in her country under the Rodrigo Duterte regime. Something very good is happening in the true crime world: talented people are writing on the cusp of literary nonfiction. This book is a good example of that kind of new, old genre, probably more essay-like than any other, but enjoyable to read through the eyes of a consumer of fictionalized nonfiction.

Brave, well-researched, intelligent, and discouraging, it is both a testimony and a warning from this end of the world. We can vote for whomever we want, but power, cutting-edge technology, money, and the cruelty of the most savage capitalism are in the hands of people who don't need democratic endorsement.

The book, its author, is ultimately so intelligent that the reader isn't overwhelmed by the more than three hundred pages, or the numbers, the names, or the facts. Instead, she lifts the stones where the scorpions and snakes lurk, their stings and fangs filled with the most vile and base parts of us. At times for the better—she herself is an example of courage and a vocation for truth—but much more for the worse, the corrupting poison of easy money, irresponsibility, alienation, loneliness, the violence from the depths of savage nihilism.

And if you're looking for more arguments, this book has been declared Book of the Year and has won awards in enough competitions and specialized magazines to make you believe how good it is.

Alfaguara The Death of Another, by Claudia Piñeiro

Argentine Claudia Piñeiro is the finest example of popular literature with a high literary intensity, and she never disappoints her hordes of readers around the world. The world of high-class escorts intertwines with a political plot to pose uncomfortable questions, in a text more complex than it appears at first glance.

RBA Neverland, by James Patterson and Candice Fox

James Patterson's successful book machine has collided with the Australian bestseller, Candice Fox, and from the happy accident has been born detective Harriet Blue, here with family problems - her brother arrested - and she is charged with investigating the disappearance of three young people in the Australian desert.

Grijalbo The White Death, by Toni Hill

The end of the Hangman Trilogy, in which Toni Hill has once again demonstrated that the path is always illuminated when he's leading the way. He makes the complex plots simple, entangling us with murders to tell us what matters to him: the disintegration, sooner or later, of any family, and love as both an anchor and a lifeline.