Kirkus Reviews: Cold case in Santander ties a 1988 killing to a chilling story of fiction and violence

Kirkus Reviews is drawing attention to a crime story that folds literary imagination into a decades-old murder mystery. The case begins with the killing of 20-year-old Sandra Ramirez in Santander, Spain, in 1988 and moves forward 20 years later, when a detective with unusual powers of deduction is brought in to examine what has remained unsolved for two decades.

Ramirez’s death is especially unsettling because of what she had written before she was killed. She had composed a short story from the perspective of a stray dog that dies beneath an old oak tree, and her body was later found under that same tree. That detail gives the case an added literary resonance and turns the murder into more than a standard procedural puzzle: it becomes a story about foreknowledge, coincidence, and the unsettling overlap between fiction and reality.

According to the Kirkus material, the 2008 investigation pairs master detective Hans Rekke with police constable Micaela Vargas. Their collaboration on the cold case eventually places both of them in serious danger, suggesting that the long-dormant crime remains tied to threats in the present rather than the past alone. The setup points to a thriller structure in which reopening an old file is not a matter of simply reconstructing events, but of confronting people or forces that have not disappeared.

Rekke is presented as an unusual investigator. He is a psychologist and a former concert pianist, and the report describes his reasoning as exceptionally sharp, with a style that evokes Sherlock Holmes. That comparison matters because it places the character in a long line of literary detectives whose greatest weapon is intellect rather than force. It also signals to readers that the book is likely to lean on layered deduction, observation, and psychological insight as much as on standard police work.

The central clue Rekke arrives at is grim and specific: he concludes that two people kicked Ramirez to death, and that one of them acted with far more violence and with a deep hatred of women. That conclusion gives the case a clear emotional and social charge. It is not only a whodunit, but also a story shaped by misogyny and brutality, with the investigation requiring attention to motive as well as mechanics.

The material supplied by Kirkus suggests that the novel’s appeal lies partly in the tension between its classical detective elements and its more modern concerns. The Holmes-like investigator, the cold case, and the careful reconstruction of events place it within a familiar crime-fiction tradition. But the female victim’s own story, the symbolic oak tree, and the explicit sense of gendered violence give the plot a darker and more contemporary edge.

For readers, publishers, and crime-fiction fans, that combination is significant. It reflects a continuing appetite for mysteries that do more than solve an old crime: they connect the puzzle to character, memory, and social danger. What happens next in the story, according to the supplied material, is the further development of Rekke and Vargas’s inquiry as they push deeper into the unresolved murder and into the risks that come with it.