Carmen Mola is the collective pseudonym of three Spanish writers of ultra-violent Spanish crime thrillers. The real authors are Jorge Díaz, Agustín Martínez and Antonio Mercero, better known as television script writers. In 2021, the authors won the Premio Planeta de Novela, the most financially valuable literary prize in the world, after the Nobel Prize.
In this final novel, El Clan, Carmen Mola closes the circle and grips readers once again. The saga of police inspector Elena Blanco comes to an end. It all began in 2017, when the authors came together under the pseudonym of Carmen Mola to create a universe around the police inspector Elena Blanco: a strong and intelligent woman, a workaholic with a complex and tormented personality marked by a past which hides numerous tragedies and secrets that influence her life. With an enormous capacity to overcome extreme situations and solve difficult cases, Elena is also a vulnerable woman who presents herself as a profoundly emotional human being. She has always paid a very high price to be immersed in the world of violence and crime.
Carmen Mola’s saga was a genuine publishing phenomenon all over the world, thanks to the authors’ extraordinary ability to elicit and provoke strong emotions in the readers, the fast pace of each of the plots and its implacable approach to the most extreme and savage violence. El Clan will not disappoint fans of Carmen Mola’s narrative, who has also been successful with historical thrillers.
When dying doesn’t matter, everything is permitted. Elena Blanco, police inspector of the Brigada de Análisis de Casos (BAC), a police brigade created to solve the most horrifying crimes, accustomed to its own methods and to acting, all too often, outside the law, faces her worst enemy: a powerful organization made up of personalities from the world of business, politics, the judiciary and the police: ‘the Clan’—if you cross them, you will end up dead. Even so, the BAC rises to the challenge of confronting a powerful family involved in illegal activities, including bribery and concealed crimes, which have sustained their influence and wealth over generations.
The investigation uncovers the Clan’s darkest secrets, leading to internal conflicts and exposing their criminal network. Throughout the narrative, readers are immersed in a world of mysterious murders, unexpected plot twists, and intense brutality, all hallmarks of the series.
Police inspector Elena Blanco, who has been part of the reader’s life in the four previous novels, receives images of her colleague and friend Zárate lying in a pool of blood, and she makes an unforgivable mistake. With the inspector wanted by the police, accused of the murder of a policeman, and her colleague Zárate missing, her other colleagues wage war on their own. The arrival of a new inspector to replace Elena worsens the situation: she seems to have been sent by the Clan with the mission of bringing down the BAC and putting Blanco in jail.
However, the discovery of some disemboweled corpses means Elena must fight to save her Brigade and find Zárate, without knowing if he is dead or alive. It is the beginning of the end for the BAC. None of its members have ever faced killers as ruthless as the Clan.
The novel delves into themes of corruption, morality, and the complexities of human nature, providing a gripping conclusion to Elena Blanco’s journey in the police. The authors Díaz, Martínez and Mercero have stated that this novel is their most realistic and disturbing work, reflecting on the pervasive presence of evil from birth.
Special thanks to Isabel Santos Peralta from Planeta Editorial House.
MORE INFO
Association website: afie.es
Instagram: @palabras_mas /@espera_que_te_lo_cuento
Facebook: Palabras+ and X (Twitter): AFIE_ES
FOR YOUR DIARY
Jorge Díaz, Agustín Martínez and Antonio Mercero will present El Clan in Geneva on Friday 16 May 2025, at 1830, at the Bibliothèque d’art et d’archéologie du Musée d’Art et d’Histoire (Promenade du Pin 5, 3rd floor, 1204 Genève).
This event is organized by the Association of Spanish International Civil Servants and Palabras+ in the context of the 2025 Week of the Spanish Language and will be moderated by Gemma Capellas Espuny and Jesús Guerrero Buitrago.