Empty Suits

Marías, who passed away last September at the age of seventy, toyed with the conventions of spy novels and thrillers throughout his career. Of the dozen or so novels of his that have been translated into English, nearly half fall cleanly into this genre, while several others feature characters or plot points that are, at the least, espionage-adjacent. In fact, save for two more typical outings—The Infatuations (2011) and Thus Bad Begins (2014)—the last twenty years of his career were given over entirely to an exploration of spy fiction.