Too Familiar a Matter | Good Children | Our Dead | Old Loves
Family should never be investigated.
In the first novel of the series, Too Familiar a Matter, the Hernández family runs a detective agency in Barcelona’s Sant Andreu neighborhood. From this close-knit community, Mateo, his wife, and their three children make a living protecting both their neighbors’ secrets and their own. Their only outside collaborator is Ayala, who handles the dirtiest jobs.
Nora, the eldest daughter, worked at the agency until a few months ago, but now no one knows where she is. Although everything suggests she left voluntarily, her family feels otherwise. Her disappearance has thrown the household into disarray and worsened the instability of her mother, Lola. One day, Carlos Guzmán—a powerful property developer, equally respected and feared in the neighborhood—walks into the agency. He hires Mateo to find his son, who has been missing for days, perhaps as a consequence of his father’s shady business dealings. Old grudges between Guzmán and Mateo leave the detective with little choice but to accept the case, even as Nora’s absence continues to erode the family from within.
In Good Children, Nora resumes her role at the agency as if nothing had happened, immersing herself in a case that keeps her away from the chaos of returning home.
The agency continues handling routine investigations until a married couple hires them to uncover the truth behind the apparent suicide of their fourteen-year-old daughter. What initially seems like just another case ends up changing the Hernández family forever.
Mateo assigns the investigation to Marc, who, thanks to Lola’s remarkable intuition, discovers that the girl had been living a double life. Ashamed by what is uncovered, her parents withdraw the case. But the Hernández family refuses to stop digging. None of them suspects the price they will pay for going too far in a disturbing case involving child sexual abuse.
In Our Dead, the Hernández family has shut down its detective agency, and each member has chosen a different professional path. Mateo now works for another agency, Nora teaches at an academy, and Amalia and Ayala have established their own detective business. They have been through a great deal together, yet some unfinished business remains.
Although employed by the WHO Agency, Mateo cannot resist investigating a case on his own. A neighbor contacts him because her son, Armand, has disappeared, and she refuses to go to the police. Armand is intelligent, ambitious, and considered a rising star in the business world. What could he be hiding that makes his parents unwilling to officially report him missing?
By taking the case, Mateo draws his daughter Amalia and his former assistant Ayala back into the world of private investigation. Despite still carrying the trauma of their earlier experiences, they agree to work in the shadows, investigating in Sant Andreu and proving that, as a family, they can face any challenge together.
In Old Loves, the final installment of the series, the Hernández family reunites after years of estrangement caused by the death of Marc, Lola’s son. Though grief still lingers, the old detective agency in Sant Andreu is back in operation, with every family member—and Ayala once again—working under Mateo’s leadership.
Their new case centers on a con artist who seduces elderly women by pretending to be a long-lost schoolmate. As the investigation unfolds, the family must contend not only with the criminal’s cunning but also with the emotional vulnerability that comes with the passing of time. Combining loneliness, social media, and digital deception, the case tests both the strength and the fractures of this singular family.
RELEVANT INFORMATION: Critics have widely praised both the series and its author, Rosa Ribas.
“For many, Rosa Ribas is the finest crime writer in Spain.” — Pedro M. Espinosa, Diario de Cádiz
“A lineage that seems to grow with every page… A delight for the most demanding readers.” — Marta Marne, El Periódico
AUDIOVISUAL POTENTIAL: In development.
AVAILABLE LANGUAGES: Spanish.
