Silver Nitrate

Montserrat works as a sound editor in Mexico City in the early 1990s, in a film industry that gives women little room. She is plain, solitary and good at her job. Her best friend Tristán is a washed-up telenovela heartthrob, charming and heading for ruin.

Their new neighbor turns out to be Abel Urueta, a horror director whom almost everyone has forgotten. Years ago he filmed a picture on volatile silver nitrate stock, intended to carry a spell from an occultist who had emigrated from Nazi Germany. He never finished it. Urueta believes a curse has damaged all three of their lives, and that completing the film might lift it.

Montserrat and Tristán agree to shoot the scenes that were never made. As they work, something malevolent starts trailing them, and the ghost of Tristán's dead ex-girlfriend begins to appear.

Occult horror with an atmospheric, slow-tightening mood, the book also pays tribute to the golden age of Mexican cinema. Film history and magic sit alongside dread, while the friendship between the two leads and their ambitions drive the story toward the question of whether the film can be finished at all.