Eduardo Mendoza

The funniest Mendoza is back with a story of spies, secret agents and losers. Mick Herron meets P.G. Wodehouse.

In a central street in Barcelona, a chaotic organization of secret agents hides behind the facade of a typical office building, a company of spies as bizarre as they are endearing.

While a new agent tries to make sense of the organization’s perplexing rules, obsessed with security, discretion and saving money – operational expenses are each agent’s responsibility – the group is given an important mission: to solve the strange death of a tourist in a boarding house on Las Ramblas and its close connection with other mysterious events that, according to the rules of logic and common sense, bear no relationship to each other.

An uproarious comic novel that takes us back to the most unbridled, irreverent Eduardo Mendoza, a bestseller with an army of unconditional readers. 

‘Slide-splitting humour, an ability to combine the diverse idiomatic registers of his characters and an unfettered freedom...[...] Like Calderón de la Barca, Mendoza knows that ‘not everything that entertains is frivolous’. And as well as knowing it, he keeps on proving it book after book.’—La Vanguardia

‘His funniest novel in years. [...] A Cervantesque novel. [...] Winning readers of literature amounts to recommending books like this one.’—ABC 

‘A novel with which neither he nor anyone else can stop laughing.’ —El Periódico de España

‘Full of timeless intelligence, [...] a wild and Cervantine novel more attuned to current affairs than it seems. [...] His books are some of the best company I know, whether for their spectacular quality, their charm, or, often, when both virtues come together.’ —El Mundo

‘Mendoza has returned to the novel with the carefree attitude, observational skill, and comedy that characterize him. [...] It has elements of a zany comedy akin to Billy Wilder.’ —El País

‘Mendoza has crafted an elaborate plot that once again displays his storytelling prowess, intertwining several mysteries whose gradual unravelling aims to surprise and delight a reader whom the ironic narrator occasionally addresses. [...] A minor work by Mendoza is an event, and these 'Three Enigmas for the Organization' is, if I may say so, the greatest of his minor works.’ —Babelia, El País