The impatient alchemist (novel)

The Impatient Alchemist is a novel by the Spanish writer Lorenzo Silva published in 2000, winner of the Nadal Prize. It is the second novel starring the civil guards Bevilacqua and Chamorro.

It has been adapted to the cinema in a film with the same title from 2002 directed by Patricia Ferreira.

Plot

A naked corpse, without traces of violence, is found tied to a bed in a roadside motel. Sergeant Bevilacqua, an atypical criminal investigator for the Civil Guard, and his assistant, the Chamorro guard, are ordered to solve the enigma.

The investigation that follows is not just a police inquiry. The sergeant and his assistant must get to the dark and unspeakable side of the victim, to her surprising secret life, as well as to the people who surrounded her, in her family, in the nuclear power plant where she worked. And unravel an increasingly complex network of money and interests that will take them to various cities. But the key, as in alchemy, is patience; the one that the investigators will need and also the one that the characters they stumble upon in their search lacked, in one way or another.