“A very different context and approach is taken by Sergio Olguín in The Best Enemy (Bitter Lemon, 2025, £9.99), a translation of the fourth of his Verónica Rosenthal stories first published in 2021. Buenos Aires emerges as a mélange of a grim corruption that impregnates business and spreads to much else, and in response but also interwoven the efforts of individuals to follow their own path. This is an investigation that is described by one of the protagonists as: ‘About the same thing as usual: the links between the powers that be and the criminal world’. There’s a bit of everything in there: influence-peddling, international espionage, links with the Argentine state and complicit media. The writing can be wry – ‘It was an experience as heady, and timely, as joining a tsarist newspaper in 1916’, and, for WhatsApp messages with emojis: ‘Humanity had taken centuries to evolve beyond the pictographic stage of writing, only for new generations to ditch the clarity of the Latin alphabet in favour of a little squinty face and some renditions of fire that were open to interpretation.’ Under pressure are honest journalists: ‘The kind who have more than one source, who don’t get swayed by platitudes or preconceived ideas; the kind who value facts over opinion and an honest opinion over vested interests (her own or the company’s).’ The Verónica backstory is novelistic rather than always focused on the plot, and some of the politics may strike readers as highly partisan, but this is an impressive, well-written and consistently interesting work.” ---The Critic
