Marta Robles, the lady of the crime novel

Prostitution, trafficking in women, a cancer with wild amputation of breasts, clandestine gambling, a betrayal, extortion, an old war conflict, lollipop dealing, an unrequited love, urban shenanigans, debts, an infidelity, corrupt policemen, a crime and even a voodoo mooring. Are we talking about the Indian novel by the late John Le Carr? No. We are talking about the last of Marta Robles, The girl you didn’t know how to love (Editorial Espasa), third case of the series starring Roures, a former war correspondent recycled into a detective, in principle, of infidelities.

The story told, as harrowing as it is sordid, does not skimp on details and denotes a ambitious research work on the part of Robles, who has put himself into the kitchen of the murkiest matters: “When you write about something, whatever it is, insignificant or not, it is an act of responsibility know about it. The opposite is a fraud for the reader. Because the novels are not real but they have to be credible. And for this they have to be underpinned in reality, in concrete and real data that make the reader not doubt what you are telling “.

Thus, to build the character of Blessing, the murdered Nigerian prostitute (I am not doing a spoiler: the first word of the first chapter, Callata, is “BANG!”, thus, in capital letters and with her admirations), the Madrilea met five blessings flesh and blood: “About 10 years ago I already thought about writing a book on trafficking in women, for which I asked my friend Mabel Lozano who was beginning to turn into the world of trafficking in women and to work against it as well as Roco Mora, who was (and continues) in Apramp (Association for Prevention, Reintegration and Care to the Prostitute Woman), that they put me in contact with a victim. But Mabel said, ‘You have to do real things because people don’t know what this is. And I understood that he was right and I dedicated myself to do reports, interviews and articles, to follow the work of different activists to collaborate with Apramp. Until about three years ago Mabel, through a police friend, connected with a repentant pimp and I thought to make a documentary and I convinced her to write a book. And since he had never written one, I told him to help him by being a desk editor. At the end of the book I thought that the reality of the trafficking world was already well known and that what was needed now was to move hearts hardened with fiction. “

To achieve this, and to move us, Robles proposed to communicate that prostitutes are real women: “We forget that they are the same as us: they suffer, they dream, they fall in love, they want to have children and a normal life and they think that, perhaps, allowing themselves to be bitten a little by the wolves, their life will be better. But it cannot be because they live eternally subdued by the debts that they guarantee with their lives and with those of their families, and even by those terrifying moorings of voodoo “. So normal that they also get sick: “I came up with the breast cancer because nobody, neither the activists nor anybody, had dealt with that issue: what happens to women when they have a serious illness and are turned into useless material for prostitution. Is a reflection that nobody had done so far, nobody. “

Access to pornography

The play respects the spirit of the classic crime novel: “I was born in Chicago in the 1920s to denounce the rottenness of institutions. And the complaint is a constant in all my novels. In this I uncover that back room in which the bad guys are not only the customers, who I call whores, and the pimps, but many others who are very good in their daily lives but are the ones who make them the contracts to pimps and front men, those who launder money, the doctors who help them commit these atrocities … I also denounce a tremendous thing that is happening with our young people and prostitution: from a very young age they have an instant relationship with Internet pornography that it is impossible for us to control. They confuse real love and real sex with what they see in porn movies, and it’s what they ask for in their relationships. That is why there are so many rapes and that is why they go to brothels and abuse and mistreat prostitutes. “

-But you, how do you go to bed after having written a terrible chapter? -I ask.

“Revolt,” he replies. And if it doesn’t happen to you, your novel is not worth it. These five Nigerian girls I was with are part of my life and I don’t want them to leave because my active commitment to them is for life.

Disciplined and rigorous, she claims to write six hours a day and does so on the back of a fitball (“to prevent my legs from falling asleep”) and accompanied by a very large bag of gummy bears. Several months before launching into writing the novel, it has been going around in his head: “I spend a lot of time thinking about it, a lot. It is something unusual. Until it is completely mine I cannot write it, and that does not happen until that i have finished research and I have internalized everything what I have discovered. “

Reader “compulsive, voracious, omnivore”, he assures to start the day reading poetry: “For me it is fundamental, I need it to breathe. Just like music and literature. And, on a recurring basis, I return to the black genre because I am very interested in knowing how evil affects the behaviors of the human being. As my character Simenn says: “A murderer is any one of us a second before committing a murder.” We all think: “Yooooo? it’s impossible.” Well no. Everything It depends on if you are on the edgee of yourself, “he concludes.

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