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For regular tasters of 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 Lasuen has decided to jump from the reportage or the journalistic chronicle to the upper echelon of literature. his novel “Perhaps” (Figurehead, Editorial Almuzara, 274 pages) constitutes a more than promising debut in this range.
The Costa del Sol is the scene of its history, where new-fangled billionaires meet, intelligence agents from the secret services of Morocco, France and Spain, and international crime at the highest level. A brilliant commander of a special unit of the Civil Guard, an investigative journalist in low hours and an anonymous dead man found on a golf course converge in a dizzying plot in which surprises follow one another. Stormy pasts and turbulent presents fuel the hope of unraveling the solution to one of the most convoluted and exciting police and espionage cases faced by its protagonists.
Pedro Lasuén (Madrid, 1974) knows the ground he treads well. He knows the Costa del Sol from his earliest childhood, before touring the African continent and setting foot in one of its prisons; He worked in France as a journalist for Euronews for twenty years and worked for the EFE agency in several African countries, before plunging into the world of judo, of whose International Federation he is the head of Media. In the manner of the classic authors of the genre, he has tasted some of the good and much of the bad offered by the underworld and the upper echelons of international politics, especially cross-border politics.
Very fluently written that is transmitted to the reader, “Maybe” smells like the first chapter of a saga that will surely provide a continuity that for the avid reader of good stories seems more than evident. With his extensive journalistic background, Lasuén flees from stylistic flourishes and focuses directly on the action, on the pure facts, and only goes down to detail if it is relevant to the development and final outcome of the plot.
He imbues his fast-paced story with humor halfway between British irony and Hispanic casticism, a mixture that contributes to outlining the characters, any of which ends up becoming an accomplice of the reader in some of its facets.
