Nadie en esta tierra

Nadie en esta tierra (2023) is the first novel in Víctor del Árbol's "Trilogía del sicario sin nombre" (Trilogy of the Nameless Hitman). Barcelona police inspector Julián Leal is contending with a terminal cancer diagnosis and a disciplinary suspension for assaulting a suspect when he travels home to Galicia to see childhood friends, possibly for the last time.

Soon after he returns to Barcelona, the bodies of people from his past begin to surface, and a superior officer driven by an old grudge moves to pin the killings on him. Leal and his partner Virginia are drawn into an investigation that reaches back into a history of violence in 1970s Galicia, forcing Leal to confront both the crimes in front of him and the ones he has spent his life trying to outrun.

Del Árbol, a leading figure in contemporary Spanish noir with a stronger following abroad (particularly in France) than at home, builds a novel around vengeance, moral compromise, and a past that keeps sending its debts due.