La Capitana / The Captain

Susana Martín Gijón goes back to the 16th century to narrate a crime wave in Granada, with the most unique detective duo in Spanish historical crime novels.

Granada, 1585. In a devastated city still suffering from the effects of the expulsion of its Moorish population, a nun struggles to keep her convent going. She is Ana de Jesús, the successor to Mother Teresa, who will be nicknamed ‘the captain of the prioresses’ for expanding, with a firm hand, the order of the Discalced Carmelites beyond the borders. A few kilometres away, on a hill overlooking the city and the Alhambra, a man governs the destinies of the monks of the same order. It is Saint John of the Cross, spiritual guide and a close friend of the prioress. These are difficult times of frantic search for funding, when the body of a disfigured man appears in the cloister of the monastery governed by Sister Ana, thus endangering the continuity of the order and its reputation. Who was he and how did he get there? Sister Ana de Jesús and Friar Juan de la Cruz will have to roll up their sleeves and start investigating the case, trying to use caution and discretion to avoid confronting the powers that be in the bastion of Christianity chosen by the Crown.