This month I’m recommending the most recent novel by captivating Mexican-born author Sylvia Moreno-Garcia who lives in Canada. Silver Nitrate was published in 2023. It is currently available in hardback, ebook and Audio editions and a paperback will be out soon. When I tell you that this story is set in the Movie and Television industries of Mexico City in the 20th century you will probably think that it doesn’t sound like Fantasy fiction. Have patience. This novel is packed with ghosts, terrors and unusual forms of magic.

Tristán and Montserrat grew up together as friends and neighbours in Mexico City. One of the things they have in common is a passion for old Horror movies. Handsome Tristán had early success as an actor in TV dramas while Montserrat went into the technical side of the entertainment industry as a Sound Editor. After a car crash in which Tristán’s wealthy girlfriend, Karina, died and he was left with serious injuries, Tristán’s career has faltered. Ten years later the car-crash is still the main thing that journalists ask him about and he stuggles to find work. Montserrat is the best at what she does but still loses jobs to younger men, which is a particular worry when she has a very sick sister in need of support. Both Tristán and Montserrat have fairly disastrous love lives and are barely getting by financially.

When Tristán moves to a cheaper apartment building he is delighted to discover that one of his neighours is retired director Abel Urueta who was famous in the 1950s and 60s for his horror films. As film buffs, Tristán and Montserrat are particularly interested in learning why Urueta’s last film Beyond the Yellow Door was never released. The old man tells them that the film’s script was rewritten by a German Occultist and probable former Nazi called William Friedrich Ewers, who was the boyfriend of the leading lady. Ewers, a follower of the British Occultist Aleister Crowley, believed that films could be used as a modern way of casting a spell. He claimed to be able to imbue the volatile silver nitrate film stock with magic which would bring great luck and power to himself and his circle. Then Ewers was murdered before the soundtrack of Beyond the Yellow Door was completed and everyone involved in the film seemed to be afflicted by bad luck. Urueta lost the young actress he loved and his career.

Tristán and Montserrat initially find this bizarre account hard to believe but Montserrat, who hopes to make some money writing up the story of the cursed film, does further research which at least confirms the existence of the people mentioned by Urueta. She is even told that some of Ewers’ circle are still alive and practising magic. Urueta is obsessed with completing Beyond the Yellow Door and persuades Tristán and Montserrat to help him. She uses her Sound Editing skills so that the three of them can record the missing scene from the soundtrack. Almost immediately Tristán and Montserrat’s luck seems to change for the better; he is offered a new starring role and her sister’s illness goes into remission.

Then things take a darker turn. There is a brutal murder, Tristán starts seeing the ghost of Karina and Montserrat feels that she is being followed around by something shadowy. The pair try to investigate the murder and begin to fear that completing Beyond the Yellow Door has empowered forces of evil. They search for allies who can offer them protection against the unquiet ghost of Ewers and his living followers but is Montserrat ready to give up magic just when she is feeling powerful for the first time in her life?

Moreno-Garcia is a difficult author to categorize. She is probably still best known for her novel Mexican Gothic and Gothic is a good adjective for most of her work. Don’t expect anything tame or understated. She often writes Historical fiction with supernatural elements and I’ve learned a lot about the history and mythology of Mexico from reading her books. Horror, Dark Fantasy and Magical Realism could all be used as tags for her novels and I’ve found it hard to pick just one to write about. I wavered between choosing Gods of Jade and and Shadow, which fits the most easily into Fantasy fiction or The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, though to appreciate that one you really need to have read H.G.Wells’ deeply unpleasant original story, The Island of Doctor Moreau. In the end I plumped for Silver Nitrate because its strong central love story makes it a particularly suitable recommendation for Valentine’s month.

Silver Nitrate is the ultimate in Urban Fantasy, set in an overcrowded metropolis with key events taking place in prosaic locations such as cramped appartments, cheap restaurants, a recording studio and an abandoned office block. Yet this is also a city in which religion and magic are still a standard part of ordinary life and a movie-memorabilia seller can double as a sorcerer. Stuck in urban poverty, many Mexican people escape into the Fantasy worlds of the kind of weird movies that Montserrat and Tristán grew up loving and the unrealistic soap operas that Tristán used to star in. In this context, the power of movies to influence people’s lives seems very real. For the performers, everything depends on keeping their looks so a promise of eternal youth, even if it involves a blood sacrifice, is bound to have been tempting for the actresses in Beyond the Yellow Door as it is for Tristán. He and Montserrat find themselves taking part in their own personalized Horror story and in the best traditions of the genre of course they split up and visit dark and lonely places.

Moreno-Garcia gleefully deploys many of the clichés of B-movie Horror in her plot – there is a sinister secret cult both in her invented film Beyond the Yellow Door and in the novel – but she has really done her research into the history of magic which lies behind them. Silver is strongly associated with magic in many cultures and Aleister Crowley, aka The Beast 666, did indeed experiment with new types of performative magic. When reading about the bizarre antics of Crowley and his associates it is often hard not to laugh but Moreno-Garcia has dug deeper. She uncovers the links that some followers of the Occult had with Racism and Fascism and explores them in Ewers’ grim backstory. She also shows how divisions based on class and race still affect the lives of the characters in the novel’s present, particularly mixed-race Tristán.

There is plenty of action in Silver Nitrate as two murders are solved and a ruthless group of sorcerers are exposed and confronted and no shortage of tense or shocking scenes as Tristán and Montserrat stray into physical and moral danger. Basically though this a novel about two people and their painful failures and unexpected strengths. Tristán’s ghostly visions are vivid and distressing and he is warned that he has necromantic powers. It is he himself who is summoning the ghost of Karina because he has never get over the guilt of failing to change her self-destructive path. When Montserrat becomes fascinated by Ewers’ ideas she suffers real temptation to become like him. She lives in a society which is deeply unfair to working class women so why shouldn’t she snatch at any advantage? This is internalized Horror and Tristán and Montserrat have to find escape routes from within themselves.

Creating complex, flawed characters who are easy to empathise with is probably Moreno-Garcia’s greatest talent as a writer. In Silver Nitrate there is the added pleasure in watching a developing love story between two people who have been best friends all their lives. Right at the start we are told that Montserrat has three great loves in her life – horror movies, her car and Tristán. Montserrat sees herself as small and plain and is very conscious of her permanent limp. She has always considered tall handsome Tristán to be out of her league so she has made herself into the ever reliable friend who nags Tristán about his drinking and smoking and picks up the pieces after his numerous failed love affairs. Tristán still thinks of Montserrat as the feisty girl who used to protect him from bullies and as the person he can relax with when life gets too stressful. When they are thrown into danger together, Montserrat seems to let go of the emotions she has been supressing and Tristán, for the first time in his life, has to be the sensible one. The dynamics of their relationship change and you start to see them as a couple who are meant to be together. I loved these characters and I hope that you will too. Until next month….

Geraldine