Language and Cultures Lecturer Dr Rogelio Guedea, with his best selling book El Crimen de Los Tepames.
Dr Rogelio Guedea from the Department of Languages and Cultures is currently one of the top five selling authors in Mexico.
Dr Guedea's final volume of his crime trilogy, El Crimen de Los Tepames or The Crime of Los Tepames has rocketed into the best seller lists in his home country, just two weeks after it was published.
“I am delighted with the response to my novel, and this has happened for two main reasons,” he explains. “Readers really liked the first two novels in the trilogy, revolving around prosecutor Abel Corona, and this last involves a famous crime which had political reverberations regarding the 1910 Mexican revolution and beyond.”
The novel describes an actual crime in the small town of Los Tepames in 1909 involving two feuding families which was highly controversial at the time, and one of the trigger points for the Mexican revolution. Dr Guedea believes the events a century ago also have relevance for Mexico today.
Another factor in the novel's success he says, was his very detailed research into the crime, involving lengthy and complex legal documents, then weaving this verisimilitude into plot and character.
Dr Guedea says the first volume of the Trilogy, Driving a Truck has been translated into English and it is expected that all three will be available in English by 2015.
“New Zealand has helped me a great deal as a novelist,” he says. “I can now see Mexico and my culture much more clearly, and this means sharper and clearer writing.”