Montserrat works an unglamourous job in Mexico City’s otherwise glamourous film industry. Sound editor contributions often go unremarked upon … unless they’re all wrong. She’s good at what she does, adding sound effects and Additional Dialogue Recording (ADR) to films during their post-production stages, making them ready for public consumption. Sadly, she’s also facing plenty of workplace sexism—not one to go drinking with the other guys, she’d getting less work and therefore less pay. It’s the typical passive-aggressive method of pushing her out. Frustrating isn’t the word for that part of her life.
Her childhood friend (and unrequited love), the actor Tristán Abascal (born Tristán Said Abaid) is facing his own challenges. He’s aged out of the kinds of roles that made his career and has now turned to voice over work for animation. But he yearns for a good meaty role, if only luck would come his way again … And it does, but not in the way he expects. When a piece of mail is incorrectly delivered to his box, Tristán takes it to his neighbor only to discover that he’s living downstairs from Abel Urueta, a director responsible for several terrific horror films from the 1960s whose career and filmography have sadly been forgotten by 1963 … Well, forgotten by most. Montserrat knows his work and has forced Tristán to watch Abel’s pictures, and the director is so surprised to encounter someone familiar with his work, that he hosts a dinner for them.
There is where Montserrat and Tristán learn that Urueta’s final horror project, a failed production called Beyond The Yellow Door, had a more interesting history than they might’ve guessed. Co-written by Wilhelm Friedrich Ewers, a former Nazi and practicing sorcerer, the picture was intended to weave an actual spell. Stopped early, it seems to have become a cursed project. And though the producer confiscated and destroyed most of the film when the production halted, Abel has kept one reel of the highly flammable but exquisitely detailed silver nitrate film for posterity. If they can dub this and see that part completed, perhaps they can finish the spell and win some good luck for themselves.
Meddling with strange forces is not something Tristán is terribly comfortable with. Montserrat soon becomes fascinated and then obsessed with Ewers’ work and magickal theories. Abel invests more hope and expectations in the project than perhaps he ought. And across the city, secret powers begin to align. Ewers may be dead, murdered in a mugging before he was able to complete his plans, but he might not be truly gone. And his teachings have imprinted upon some devout followers.
Montserrat and Tristán are caught up in a strange, occult, and possibly supernatural plot, and only keeping their wits and maybe mastering some newfound paranormal abilities will help them live long enough to undo what they’ve set into motion by playing around with an old, dangerous film. Will they triumph, or will they succumb to a dead sorcerer’s cryptic beckons to follow him into the night …
Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Silver Nitrate is an engaging occult mystery novel with touches of supernatural terror and dark fantasy. Set in the final months of 1993, it weaves some secret history elements into that period’s Mexico City, creates some terrific characters as well as intriguing antagonistic factions, and explores a unique magical theory. In that way, the book draws inspiration from the same well as award winning author Tim Powers does for many of his most memorable projects, but Silver Nitrate processes that inspiration through Moreno-Garcia’s quirky, individual perspectives. The result is a book that stands on its own two feet but can easily occupy a shelf alongside books like Powers’ Last Call or The Gates of Anubis. The supernatural thriller aspects and action are well conceived and written, but the ideas at play are where the book really sings clearest and loudest.
Silver Nitrate grabbed me from the first chapter and held me spellbound throughout. This is storytelling of a high caliber, one that doesn’t waste words or time lingering on one concept for too long and yet never feels rushed or underbaked. Moreno-Garcia has done quite a bit of research into film stocks, sound editing processes, and the history of the film industry in Mexico, and I know enough about these topics to be caught up int the lovely verisimilitude. This information does not come in the form of infodumps but as crystals interwoven into dialogue and action. For example, who but a film sound editor could note a supernatural presence not by the direct effect it has but by the spooky lack of sound in the vicinity. It’s no simple task to include background information into prose without showing the seams, but Moreno-Garcia makes it look as easy.
A surprising addition are the little easter eggs for fans of horror films and fiction, which pepper the text. There’s a scene following a botched ritual which finds our characters chanting “Our wards repel you!” which evokes both “The power of Christ compels you!” from The Exorcist as well as Benjamin Franklin Fischer’s belittling of a ghostly Emeric Belasco in The Legend of Hell House. There’s a line of dialogue about burning books and then burning the ashes, too, which recalls a bad idea solution to the initial reanimated corpse in The Return of the Living Dead (“Then we’ll turn up the heat and burn the ashes too!”) that only succeeds in unleashing the unintended consequence of a horde of the undead. There’s even a scene where a shattered mirror behaves like the weaponized glass shards from Lucio Fulci’s splattery The Beyond. As well there are tips of the hat to Mexican horror and gothic filmmakers such as Carlos Enrique Taboada, Rubén Galindo, Jr., and René Cardona, Jr. These do not necessarily call attention to themselves or stop the narrative’s forward momentum, but they do share the author’s awareness of the genre’s history and gave me grins when I spotted them.
As well, there are historical nuggets built into the text, such as a line about 1994 starting on a downward spiral—when that was the year that nine inch nails released their sophomore studio album The Downward Spiral. The result then, is a propulsive plot and character driven narrative that seems to revel in playful language and sentence construction.
And as clever as it is, the writing still delivers on the shocks, chills, and feels. Readers looking for some effective terror will find occult secrets, cosmic threats, and murderous cultists aplenty. Readers looking for lighter touches of romance will find often heartbreaking truth in Montserrat and Tristán’s relationship. Readers interested in historical fiction will find telling details, social issues, and cultural context on Mexico City in the 1990s. Those looking for pulse-pounding thriller situations will encounter nail-biting situations as well (though mostly in the book’s latter half). There is a lot going on here, but the writing is uncluttered.
Silver Nitrate is an engaging read, and a book I look forward to revisiting. It’s the kind of novel we hope wins plenty of accolades and awards so the rest of the world can be let in onto the secret: Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a terrific writer who spins compulsively readable and layered prose that is also unafraid to be playful. This is an author who has become not merely one to watch but whose new works I eagerly anticipate.
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Thank you to NetGalley and Del Rey for providing an eARC edition in exchange for an honest review.
Silver Nitrate is available for pre-order in eBook, hardcover, and audiobook editions. It is expected to hit shelves in July.
Later this week, we check out a forthcoming YA title, which blends psychological suspense with an apocalyptic scenario. Cyn Balog’s You Won’t Believe Me is available for preorder in eBook and paperback editions.
Next week, we take a look at the second book in Michael La Ronn’s Chicago Rat Shifter series, which finds wererat Cyrus Grant caught up in a new romance … and horrifying supernatural situation. Rat City is available in eBook and paperback editions.
“Follow Me Into the Night: Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Silver Nitrate” is copyright © 2023 by Daniel R. Robichaud. Cover image taken from the forthcoming Del Rey eBook edition, released 2023.
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