Posted on 10/17/2021 5:06:32 PM PDT by Trillian
She's gripped Spain with her ultra-violent crime thrillers and was regarded by critics as the country's answer to Italy's reclusive novelist Elena Ferrante.
But now Carmen Mola has revealed her most stunning plot twist: she doesn't exist, and her books are penned by three middle-aged men.
On Friday night the €1million Planeta prize was awarded to Mola, an author who until now had been presented as a female university professor writing under a pen name so she could remain anonymous.
But when the main prize at the ceremony was announced in the presence of King Felipe VI in Barcelona, three men stepped up to the podium - throwing the literary world into a state of confusion.
Agustín Martínez, Jorge Díaz and Antonio Mercero published novels and worked as scriptwriters under their real names before writing as Mola. Credits include work on TV series Central Hospital and Blind Date.
Their lead character in the Mola novels is detective Elena Blanco, a police inspector with a fondness for karaoke, grappa and casual sex, according to publisher Penguin Random House.
The men, all in their 40s and 50s, denied choosing a female pseudonym to help sell the books. Mercero told Spanish newspaper El País. 'I don't know if a female pseudonym would sell more than a male one, I don't have the faintest idea, but I doubt it.'
They previously claimed in interviews that Mola was a professor in her late 40s, telling Spanish ABC newspaper three years ago they needed anonymity to 'protect a settled life that has nothing to do with literature'.
The books have sold more than 200,000 copies, been translated into eleven languages and are being adapted for television by Endemol Shine and ViacomCBS International Studios.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Violence happens off screen for the most part.
Murder She Wrote would be considered a Cozy Mystery.
The four types of mystery are the police procedural (starring the police, natch!) the hard boiled detective (featuring a private eye who quite often was involved in law enforcement), the law and order (starring a lawyer) and the amateur sleuth which may or may not be a cozy.
Men tend to write more police procedural. Women tend to write more amateur sleuth. And Cozys are VERY female dominated.
—”(Ellery was only two guys, though).”
How about a group of 24 writers?
“Naked Came the Stranger is a 1969 novel written as a literary hoax poking fun at the American literary culture of its time. Though credited to “Penelope Ashe,” it was in fact written by a group of twenty-four journalists led by Newsday columnist Mike McGrady.
McGrady’s intention was to write a book that was both deliberately terrible and contained a lot of descriptions of sex, to illustrate the point that popular American literary culture had become mindlessly vulgar. The book fulfilled the authors’ expectations and became a bestseller in 1969; they revealed the hoax later that year, further spurring the book’s popularity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_Came_the_Stranger
Clifford Irving?
There are many and not even thinking about the daily news.
A cozy sounds like it might be a nice change of pace every now and then.
GC Chesterton's Father Brown series is considered a cozy so it is not only women who write or read them.
Just the majority of the recent ones are written by women. They took off during the 2000s so there are a lot of them out there. Some good, some bad and some so woke you want to throw up.
Agatha Christie wrote cozies, and her mystery novel “And Then There Were None” has sold more copies than any other crime/mystery novel.
Agatha Christie wrote cozies, and her mystery novel “And Then There Were None” has sold more copies than any other crime/mystery novel.
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