| Jorge Díaz, Antonio Mercero and Agustín Martínez, winners of the Planeta Prize, in Barcelona on Saturday.QUIQUE GARCÍA |
The truth about Spain’s mystery novelist Carmen Mola: ‘We did not hide behind a woman, just behind a name’
The three men who wrote ‘La bestia,’ the thriller that won this year’s Planeta Prize, deny claims that they used a female pseudonym as a marketing strategy
The three men who, it turns out, were really writing the best-selling thrillers by Spanish mystery novelist Carmen Mola, have spoken out to tell their story following the controversy sparked last week when their real identities were revealed at the award ceremony of a major literary competition.
Jorge Díaz, Agustín Martínez and Antonio Mercero, professional screenwriters in their forties and fifties, were persuaded to come forward when their manuscript La bestia (or, The beast), a gory tale of child murders set in Madrid during the cholera epidemic of 1834, was named the winner of this year’s Planeta Prize, handed out by the publishing house of the same name. This year the prize money had been raised from €601,000 to a full €1 million, overtaking the Nobel Prizes in the amount awarded to the winner.