#RivetingReviews: Max Easterman reviews THE BEST ENEMY by Sergio Olguín, translated by Miranda France

This is the fourth novel by Argentine writer Sergio Olguín to feature investigative journalist Verónica Rosenthal – all of them have been published in the UK by Bitter Lemon Press. It is refreshing to read a crime thriller that doesn’t revolve around a police protagonist suffering from some kind of addiction or psychopathy. Not that Ms Rosenthal does not have problems, but they are of a less extreme nature and the police play only a minor and incidental role in this very political story.

For those of you who haven’t met her before, which I regret to say included myself, Ms Rosenthal works for the Buenos Aires magazine Nuevo Tiempo, which itself has problems that centre on its viability and ownership, problems which are central to the story. It all begins with the murder of the former editor of the magazine, Andrés Goicochea, who is now freelancing and is involved in a complex investigation into corruption. The shooting is apparently the result of a botched burglary at his home. He had asked his successor as editor, Patricia Beltrán, to come to the house to discuss what he’s so far discovered and she has the bad luck to turn up at the critical moment and gets shot as well. She survives – just.

Goicochea’s computer with all his research has vanished in the burglary; his ex-wife may well know something about that research, but she is also murdered shortly afterwards. However, Beltrán is able to pass on to Verónica what she had already learnt about that research from an earlier meeting with Goicochea: ‘the links between the powers that be and the criminal world … influence peddling, international espionage, links with the Argentine state and complicit media. The information I have already is pure gold’. This convinces Verónica that the shootings had nothing to do with a ‘burglary’ but were about stopping Goicochea’s investigation in its tracks. She and a few trusted colleagues set out to find out why. What follows is a cat-and-mouse chase that in the end will uncover not only the true motives and the identities of the killers but also some very unpleasant connections between powerful businessmen and an equally unpleasant Israeli former army commander and the war crimes he authorised.

The facts of the case are fascinating enough, but along the way, Sergio Olguín shines a devastating light on the corruption and shortcomings of the Argentine state and the organisations that work in it and for it. Each time the story edges forward, Olguín gives us background information about the key players; in less skilled hands than his, this could be distracting, frustrating, provoking thoughts of ‘get on with it!’ In fact, each background story illuminates and embellishes the crime story. We learn about Verónica, for example, that she has ‘escapist tendencies’: over her thirty-five years she ‘had managed to evolve so many subtle forms of escape that could have filled her hours talking over them in therapy. …she sometimes wondered if she was running away from running away.’ And so her determination to follow the evidence wherever it might lead is somehow all the more surprising and nail-biting, not least because her personal life is getting increasingly fraught and the likelihood of her ‘running away’ again is a distinct possibility.

But she wonders if the owners of Nuevo Tiempo are somehow behind the murders: they are, she knows, involved in many activities beyond journalism; collectively, the three owners have fingers in a multitude of pies: ‘real estate, security, docks … oil, casinos, bingo halls … land, export of cereals … the three of them must have represented about ten different kinds of crime in Argentine society.’But as one of her contacts explains, this situation is so common, that if these crimes were what Goicochea was investigating: ‘In Argentina nobody shows you the door because you’re a cattle rustler … or a money launderer. None of these three men … would have a journalist killed over [these kinds of] allegations.’ And so it turns out. When the real reason for the murders emerges, life gets seriously dangerous for Verónica and her fellow investigators.

The Best Enemy is more than a good thriller: it’s a ‘guidebook’ to the pursuits, virtues, sins, and obsessions of Argentine society. In an excellent translation by Miranda France, it lays bare the tensions, the pressures, and the temptations to the main chance in a country that has suffered more than its fair share of economic and political chicanery, whilst at the same time being the chosen destination of some of the nastier refugees from Europe and beyond.

Reviewed by Max Easterman

THE BEST ENEMY

Written by Sergio Olguín

Translated from the Spanish by Miranda France

Published by Bitter Lemon Press (2025)

June 2025 #RivetingReviews titles are available to buy from bookshop.org.

Max Easterman spent thirty-five years as a BBC broadcaster. He was a lecturer in journalism for seventeen years at Huddersfield University and is today a translator, media trainer with Sounds Right, jazz musician and reviewer.

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