Juan Gómez-Jurado
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Juan Gómez-Jurado | |
|---|---|
 Juan Gómez-Jurado, February 2007 |
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| Born | December 16, 1977 Madrid, Spain |
| Occupation | Novelist, Short story writer, Screenwriter, Columnist |
| Genres | Drama, Thriller |
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Juan Gómez-Jurado (Born 16 December 1977 in Madrid, Spain) is an award winning journalist, writer and researcher who studied journalism at the Universidad San Pablo Ceu. At the moment he is a columnist in "La Voz de Galicia," distributed in Spain, and he participates in several radio and TV programs.
He worked in many the most important Spanish media, like 40 Principales, Cadena Ser, Cadena Cope, Radio España, Canal + and ABC, before hitting the bestseller lists in ten countries of Europe and South America with God's Spy (Espía de Dios), his first novel. An instant bestseller in Spain, with rights sold in 42 countries to date and more than a million copies sold, God’s Spy is a contemporary thriller set in the Vatican, where, in the aftermath of Pope John Paul II’s death, the hunt for a serial killer reveals a chilling conspiracy.
[edit] Books and literature
- Contract with God (Atria, 2009). Upcoming novel. A lost treasure, a Nazi war criminal, and a lifelong quest to find a missing heirloom are the starting points for this. Father Anthony Fowler, CIA operative and member of the Vatican's secret service, the Holy Alliance, pays a visit to a war criminal living under a pseudonym because of the terrible experiments he performed on Jewish children. Fowler offers him a deal - he will not reveal the man's true identity in exchange for a huge candle covered in fine filigree gold. But it isn't the gold Fowler is after - it is the metallic object preserved within the wax, a missing fragment of an ancient map. Soon Fowler is involved in an expedition to Jordan set up by the enigmatic head of Kayn industries, a reclusive billionaire who has links to the highest levels of the Catholic Church. But there is a traitor in the group who has links to terrorist organisations back in the US, and who is patiently awaiting the moment to strike. From wartime Vienna to terrorist cells in New York and a lost valley in Jordan, Contract with God is about a quest for power and the secrets of an ancient world.
- God's Spy (Dutton, 2007), English translation of Espía de Dios by James Graham. The novel takes place in the days following the death of Pope John Paul II, when 115 cardinals have to be called to the Vatican in order to take part in the Conclave to elect the new Pope. With Rome under siege to foreign press and thousands of mourners, the last thing it needs is a serial killer on the loose. Paola Dicanti is a profiler who works with the Italian police - she has been put in charge of profiling serial killers in a department of one ie herself. She is untested and her experience of serial killers is, as yet, theoretical. This is until she is called to the church of Santa Maria in the Vatican state. A cardinal has been found murdered, his eyes destroyed, his hands cut off. It seems that this is not the first victim - another cardinal was found in similar circumstances but the authorities didn't want a scandal. Recovering from a bitter affair with her boss, Paola begins to build her profile using information from the scene of the crime, from the autopsy, and from forensic evidence. She is helped in this by Anthony Fowler, a priest from the States. But it turns out that Fowler is no ordinary priest - he clearly has links to the CIA, and knows a lot about the serial killer than Dicanti could ever have guessed. The situation is complicated further when a young female journalist intercepts tapes that were meant to be sent to the press, putting her life in danger.
- La Masacre de Virginia Tech: Anatomía de una mente torturada (El Andén, 2007): On July 15 2007, Gómez-Jurado was in the United States at the time of the Virginia Tech shooting and traveled to Blacksburg to compile his experiences in a text for publication initially in a Spanish newspaper. When the newspaper rejected his text for being excessively long even for a serial publication, Gómez-Jurado decided to publish it in book form “so that the voices, the suffering of the victims, were not limited a list and a number”.
- Identidad Secreta (Lago Ediciones, 2007), an anthology of his columns on International Affairs.
- Otras voces (Alfaguara, 1996), an anthology of short stories.
[edit] Controversy and media reaction
There had been high controversial issues in Spain regarding to God's Spy. The main reason is that the antagonist, Viktor Karoski, is a serial killer, pedophile priest. In the book there is a highly detailed portrait of Saint Matthew Institute, carbon copy of a real institution in the United States (Maryland based, as well) dedicated to rehabilitation of sex-offender priests. Some catholic organizations of Spain and Poland protested against the novel because of this. In both countries, nonetheless, the main reaction of the critics was fairly good to the novel. In the USA the early reviews has been positive. Booklist, ie, praised the book as a "First-rate thriller".
