This book blew my mind at least three times. One, it's the first book published in English by this author (who lives and writes in Barcelona) and it was so perfect that I had no idea until I went digging to see what else he'd written. Two, it uses a format that I don't usually like because it's easy to execute in a confusing, messing way. This guy nailed it, though. The story is presented as a case file of different media (letters, journaling, surveillance footage, and audio clips, all written as transcipts) collected over the course of a couple months. It chronicles the experience of A. and his companion Niamh as they unravel the mystery of multiple suicides in A.'s newly-inherited spooky mansion. It's Clue, it's Scooby-Doo (but actually palatable), but it's also psychologically torturous in a delightful literary kind of way. A. slowly descends into the same madness that killed father and son before him, and Niamh documents meetings, hauntings, and their daily struggles with secret societies, encoded letters, and absent butlers by sneaking A/V equipment into nearly every situation. Which is convenient, as she doesn't speak. It was scary, funny, heartwarming, and disturbing, all rolled into a brilliant story that ends as mysteriously as it began.
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