#Review - Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Silver Nitrate
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Jo Fletcher Books, 18 July 2023
Available as: HB, 318pp, audio, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781529418040

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of Silver Nitrate to consider for review.

Silver Nitrate is a smart, scary and complex horror novel drawing on the legacy of classic films and books - but with a sense of edginess all of its own as it unspools around the legacy of a (fictitious) Nazi occultist who flees to Mexico following WW2.

In Mexico City, Montserrat works as an editor at Antares, a firm specialising in audio for low-budget horror films. She loves her work and is good at it but times are tough in 1993 with new techniques coming along and her pig of a boss favouring male editors, so she has time on her hands and a need for new projects.

Montserrat's childhood friend Tristán, a disgraced soap star, is in a similar situation with work hard to find since he was involved in a scandal some years before - a scandal that left him, at least in his own eyes, disfigured. So both friends are ready for some distraction, and perhaps the prospect of redressing their misfortunes - although they often don't see eye to eye.

The bickering that ensues between Montserrat and Tristán is just wonderful. These are people who know each other really well; who met in school; who got up to mischief as kids; who fell out and made up repeatedly; whose careers overlap and parallel one another; and yet who still don't understand each other - or themselves. In one sense it's Montserrat and Tristán against the world, in another it's Montserrat and Tristán against each other in a death match. All of that is further complicated when Tristán's new neighbour turns out to be famous director Abel Urueta, who stopped making films in the 60s with a particularly notorious horror production that is rumoured to have been suppressed. Now he wants to finish his movie - and this is the project that will transform everyone's lives.

So, a director whose career spiralled downwards, a dead occultist and a washed up actor. Only Montserrat seems to be active in the industry, and the others need her help. But will she be able, and willing, to do what they want of her? And what might it do to her?

I loved this beautiful book. Whether evoking subtle, crawling dread, conjuring monstrous horrors, exploring the relationship between the Nazi past and the (slightly more) subtly prejudiced present, or just showing us 90s Mexico City in all its glory as we follow Montserrat and Tristán about their day-to-day (and less day-to-day) business, Silver Nitrate just shines. In making literal the idea of the magic of cinema it modernises the whole apparatus of traditional horror (though I loved the take on MR James where a character is attacked by a murderous tablecloth) as well as portraying a full gallery of noir figures - the washed up actress, the director determined to come back none final time - and giving proper time and respect to all the figures you'd see before the camera.

Moreno-Garcia could well be a magician herself here, transmuting base elements of plot and character, and the conventions of horror and noir (look out for the trench coats!) into something that is unique, valuable and - while chilling at times - actually a powerful evocation of stubborn friendship and unwitting love.

STRONGLY recommended.

For more information about Silver Nitrate, see the publisher's website here.