Traumas, kidnappings and tragedies come together inexorably in more than 100,000 words containing The crack of silence (SUMA, 2024). Destiny as judge, the true protagonist of the pages of Castillo’s new work, once again passes sentence. Fatum est scriptuma phrase so well known to readers of Biology (The day sanity was lost and The day love was lost), resounds thunderously again in this latest installment. Certainly: destiny is written. For this reason, Castillo’s recently published novel could only end up returning to themes and characters already covered by the author. For those who miss them, The crack of silence brings back the journalist Look Triggsthe teacher Jim Schmoer and the agent Ben Miller. And no one shuts them up. Even less, to Miren, for whom the fight for the search for truth in a world ruled by power continues to be her existential aspiration, in an unrepentant desire to do justice to victims left aside. She herself was, as readers of The snow girl. In fact, the founding trauma of Triggs’s life, that rape that infected her soul in 1997 in a New York park, continues to exert its deleterious influence on the young journalist in 2011, the year in which the core of the events of The crack of silence.
Sum (2024). 448 pages
The crack of silence
Javier Castillo
The protagonists of Castillo’s plots, like real-life people so often, are beaten by a supreme, ineluctable force that dictatorially imposes its law on the vital events of its subjects. In the face of destiny, there is only silence. However, as occurs in totalitarianisms, also in this novel, silence is brittle and, through its inevitable cracks, a certain hope can make its way. Although everything is written, the truth also exists. And they have dedicated themselves to it Jim, look and ben.
This time, the case at hand is especially personal: the investigation into the disappearance of Agent Miller’s son in 1981. Daniel, 7 years old, was last seen at the door of the school where he studied and was never heard from again. Thirty years later, Lisa and Ben Miller, who are beginning the last leg of their life journey, want to make peace with themselves and leave the world with the truth of what happened to their little boy. Lisa is dying and Ben swears that he will find out what happened to Daniel. For them, time stopped that fateful April 24, 1981 and the only way to reset that clock was to know what fate had in store for his son. Even if it was to stop permanently for Lisa in 2012, such a clock had to start working again right where it stopped: in the spring of ’81, at school Clove Valley, Daniel’s last known whereabouts. To do this, Miller, desperate, resorts to the help of Triggs, who already demonstrated his worth and investigative tenacity in times past, in the disappearance of Kiera Templeton.
Immersed in an investigation against the degenerate Baunstein, Miren will also agree to delve into the search for Daniel, but what she will discover in both cases will be shocking. It is the consequence of seeking the truth: “in reality, there was nothing more risky than illuminating the shadows because you didn’t know what you would find in them” (p. 209). What she discovers is eye: an evil entity that, while hidden, hides in broad daylight and that traded in prohibited sexual content. The whole society was Eye: “a harmful underworld of which all kinds of people were part. And that was the worst of all” (p. 316). The anonymity of the collective mass shielded this association in such a way that it was difficult to discover it. When the entire society is guilty, no one wants it to be investigated: in Eye “the entire society was […] truck drivers, doctors, judges,…” (p. 316). Miren wonders how to put an end to the spread of Eye’s corruption: “how can something like this be stopped?” –She asked – How do you stop something that is so deep within so many people? (p. 317). The inability to find a scapegoat whose sacrifice appeases the community or stops the moral hemorrhage of their society makes avoiding investigations about it the best way to continue moving forward without everything collapsing: “thinking about that conversation and if I could use some of that increase in crime […] but he soon discarded the idea as he could not find a clear culprit to attack” (p. 53). However, nothing can stop Miren, especially after discovering that her rape had been recorded and Baunstein had the video. The consequences of Miren’s audacity will certainly not be long in coming, since she will be the scapegoat of a corrupt society: sudden dismissal from her newspaper, assault on her house, burning of the research files that she kept carefully in a warehouse. And a menacing eye drawn on her home: Eye’s seal. But not even for that does Miren’s investigation into the entity’s dirty laundry stop, as she discovers the relationship between this all-encompassing organization and the disappearance of the Miller child.
Music, the impersonal protagonist of Castillo’s works, returns with force to The crack of silence and it is decisive for the resolution of the Daniel Miller enigma. With the help of crank music boxes and the baroque melody of Laschia ch’io panga resonating again (the author already claimed this piece in Everything that happened with Miranda Huff), researchers realize a detail that everyone had overlooked three decades ago. Furthermore, along with the music, the silence of Alice Amber, Daniel’s classmate in 1981, will finish completing the puzzle of the boy’s disappearance that April 24. In Alice’s silence, a thousand demons screamed, concentrated on an atrocious blow, perpetrated by the members of the aberrant Eye: “that trauma silenced her forever” (p. 424). Forever, until the arrival of Ben, Jim and Miren, each going their separate ways, to Alice’s house. It was fate that brought them all together to judge them and issue an unappealable verdict. Thus the pattern of madness and sanity, love and lack of love of Biology was repeated, where the threads of fate They had already woven in advance a tapestry that would only be revealed to its weavers once their fate had been consummated. However, upon noticing the law of destiny, it is Ben’s forgiveness for those responsible for Daniel’s disappearance that is revealed as the unexpected protagonist of The crack of silence: “even the greatest tragedy can be forgiven” (p. 405).
