“La niña de oro is a crime novel and high literature. Pablo Maurette is a master.”

“Everything seems to have a place in this novel: crime, mutilation, bibliofilia, black magic, and whimsical erudition, brought down to the innocent land of the crime novel by the depraved Renaissance man that is Maurette.”

“ La niña de oro, a magnificent novel with characters—some extravagant—that are created with depth and terse prose...A detective investigation, the prostitution of minors, magical thinking, pseudoscientific delirium, and police corruption are intertwined in the plot of an ingenious and unconventional plot developed with pulse and without implausible twists.”

“La Niña de Oro is a detective novel that begins with a persecution that we won’t hear much about until later in the novel. It ends up being a passionate mystery with a good dose of humor, not only because of the detective plot but because of the dimension added by the psychological and human plane. The fantastical attempts are anchored by the human realities that permeate the story, in which there is also room for reflections on the decline of romantic relationships or the existence of God.”

“The most original part of this novel is how it unravels the different endings. How it abandons the investigators in order to show us the truth that they will never know, and, in addition, a certain amorality of truth when it is imposed on compassion or ignorance. New ways of telling the same story.”

“Pablo Maurette is a very interesting novelist, because he perfectly masters the mechanisms of his craft as a professor of Comparative Literature. Reading La niña de oro can be a sort of murky fun—a kind of Buenos Aires The Name of the Rose with its chronology rooted in the winter holidays, or our summer.”

“Silvia Rey works at the Prosecutor’s Office where crimes are ‘more an embarrassment than a fear.’ She is 39, doesn’t mind being alone, and is a strong but easygoing person. Her vacation plans are thwarted by the murder of Aníbal Doliner, a peculiar Biology professor. The first suspect is a taxi boy—a young albino sex worker—but nothing is as simple as it seems. The proceedings progress slowly but at a good rate, mixing interrogations with the prosecutor’s conversations with her ancient father over breakfast that are filled with feeling and intelligent reflections. There’s also a healthy cast of secondary characters, like the pigeon-killing widow, who complete the narration very well. The police procedures are covered by the sub-inspector Carucci who is full of twists and turns. He is special because of his loneliness, his sweets, and his undefined attractiveness. The picture is completed by a vision of Buenos Aires in the late 90s that is immersed in violence, structural corruption, and hints of other cases that get in her way and move her farther away from the resolution...All of this is held up by sober prose that discusses violence without the fear of the explicit but without abuse—almost elegantly. And with an ending that is not at all complacent; a pure delight.”

“Crimes and investigations are written into the everyday. This is the fascinating thing about Maurette’s novel. (...) A lively story with precise descriptive details ensures a gratifying and pleasant reading experience.”

“We can’t refrain from highlighting the fluidness and quality of Maurette’s prose. His construction of characters is enviable, and his dialogues boast a simplicity that is not at all easy to achieve. With all of this, the writer, screenwriter, and professor from Argentina constructs a novel that is able to break from the mold of the classic crime novel with plenty of nods to the classic North American novel, which he twists and modernizes.”

“If one of the fundamentals of art according to Borges—chance, echoes, and resonances—dominates in this story, it is in literature as a game and nonsense, where we can find César Aria. (...) Like a good ‘depraved Renaissance man,’ as Alan Pauls describes this author, he exhibits a great capacity for changing registers, going from slang to classical quitations, and he plays with that border where jokes touch incorrectness.”

“La Niña de Oro is an agile, exciting, terrible book that revolves around the many meanings of the word ‘monster.’ What was Frankenstein’s monster? Perpetrator? Victim? That question applies to many of the characters and all of the professions...”

“A magnificent novel.”