Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: The Best Enemy by Sergio Olguin

 

Sergio Olguin is an Argentine journalist and fiction writer. His work has been translated into German, French, and Italian. His books about investigative journalist Veronica Rosenthal are his first pieces to be translated into English. The fourth book in the series The Best Enemy was translated by Miranda France. It was originally published in Spanish as La Mejor Enemiga by Alfaguara (Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial Argentina) in 2021. The English translation is being released in March 2025 by Bitter Lemon Press in the UK. For an informative interview with Olguin, see the Crime Fiction Lover article here: https://crimefictionlover.com/2025/02/interview-sergio-olguin/

Veronica works for Nuestro Tiempo, a news magazine, and lives with her long-time lover Federico Cordova, who is a senior manager at the law firm owned by Veronica’s father. Veronica is feeling a bit bored with life as the book opens. Then she learns she is pregnant and that respected journalist freelancer Andres Goicochea has been killed and his partner Patricia Beltrán injured.

The authorities categorize the shootings as a robbery attempt but Veronica and her journalist friends are suspicious. They learn that Goicochea had been looking into questionable business dealings by the owners of a wealthy media empire. Apparently quite dubious because the journalists became the target of thugs trying to retrieve whatever information the journalists had acquired. Kidnapping, shooting, blackmail, and stabbing ensued.

Interspersed with the gangs chasing the journalists are multiple subplots: Veronica analyzes her feelings about her pregnancy and Federico. Rosenthal Law’s part in a contentious divorce is surprisingly complicated. There are long flashbacks about Veronica’s childhood and family, especially her grandfather, which incorporate a sweeping review of Argentine socio-politics.

The readability of a foreign book depends on the quality of the translation; Miranda France did outstanding work with this novel. An author herself as well as a journalist, foreign correspondent, and Spanish literature teacher, the narrative reads as if it were originally written in English. Really well done.

So little South American crime fiction is available in translation that devoted followers of the genre owe it to themselves to look up this series just to get a sense of the style. While there is substantial text extraneous to the crime story, I found the extensive background useful to my understanding of the history of the nation and its society. This book is not a quick read, though, and the cast of characters can be hard to track.

Review from Kirkus:  https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/sergio-olguin/the-best-enemy/

Review from Crime Fiction Lover: https://crimefictionlover.com/2025/02/the-best-enemy-by-sergio-olguin/

Review from Shots Crime & Thriller Ezine: http://www.shotsmag.co.uk/book_reviews_view.aspx?BOOK_REVIEW_ID=2874

 

·         Publisher: ‎Bitter Lemon Press (March 25, 2025)

·         Language: ‎English

·         Paperback: ‎352 pages

·         ISBN-10: ‎1916725090

·         ISBN-13: ‎978-1916725096

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4kKfoy9

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2025 

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.