Miguel Anxo Fernández

Biography

Miguel Anxo Fernández teaches Audiovisual Communication at the University of Vigo. He is a film and TV critic for the Galician newspaper La Voz de Galicia and has written or contributed to important studies on Galician and Spanish cinema. In 2012, he received the prestigious Galician Culture Award for audiovisual creation. He is best known for his crime fiction, starring private detective Frank Soutelo, based in Los Angeles, but with Galician roots. The first of the novels in this series is A Niche for Marilyn (2002), which won the García Barros Prize for long novels. His other fiction includes Blues for Moraima (2017), about an exiled filmmaker who is persuaded by a television journalist to return to Galicia and promote his work, which received another of Galicia’s main literary awards, the Blanco Amor.

Synopsis

A Niche for Marilyn (144 pages) is the first in a series of crime novels featuring the private detective Frank Soutelo, who is based in Los Angeles, but has Galician ancestry. It received one of the most prestigious fiction awards in Galicia, the García Barros, and was first published in 2002.

Sample

I don’t go by the name they gave me when I was born, but my real name doesn’t matter anyway. I don’t care if that sounds odd to you. But before I get going with my story, let me introduce myself: I’m Paco to my relatives from Muros (my Aunt Castora, who’s over 90, still calls me Paquiño as if I were a little boy) and to my clients I’m Frank, Frank Soutelo. I added the Soutelo part because it sounds good and it’s also in honor of my father, who was from there, you know. It’s the village that’s famous for its bagpipe player. The truth is, and even if it’s too much information, they were both good friends when they were kids. That’s why I still have a one-of-a-kind platter that Avelino Cachafeiro recorded on Pontevedra Radio during the forties, because it was one of my father’s most treasured souvenirs. Getting back to my last name, I have to say I’m really tired of explaining how, in spite of the fact that it’s got quite a lilt to it, it’s not Italian. And oh, by the way, my closest friends call me Big Frank because I’ve got a hefty physique. But I’m not fat, of course.