“The Mystery of the Enchanted Crypt” is an unusual and unexpected novel. It is at once a witty parody of detective fiction and a caricature of life in a large European city. Schoolgirls mysteriously disappear from a convent school. Realizing its helplessness, the police turn for help to a highly peculiar character — a former criminal and now a patient in a psychiatric hospital. Perhaps it is precisely this combination of traits that lends his judgments astonishing insight and his actions amusing unpredictability. But above all, only this extravagant sleuth proves capable of solving the mysterious crime…
Novelist and playwright Eduardo Mendoza (b. 1943) is deservedly considered one of the greatest contemporary Spanish writers. His novel “City of Marvels” became an international bestseller and was successfully adapted for the screen by director Mario Camus. “The Mystery of the Enchanted Crypt” is the first of Mendoza’s parodic and satirical works.