Road Closed Ahead

In a Santiago at the end of 2006, when the classification of femicide in Chile did not yet exist, the detective of the Amparo Leiva Homicide Brigade, at the culmination of her career as a police officer, had to face the investigation of the murder of a woman at the hands of her lover. It will be a crime scene that will open old doors from her past and bring back an old case that marked her beginnings as a detective. She is on the verge of an important assignment to Iquique and involved in an administrative summary; Admired by her police procedures and at the same time questioned by her peers, Leiva will find herself entangled in a threatening plot from which only her memories will be able to bring her to light.

Key points

2022 – Forestal Awards, Best Novel

• The novel takes us into the mind of Amparo Leiva, a detective caught between two cases that merge into one.
• The plot follows a detective who investigates the murder of a woman, offering us different layers of her thoughts, immersed in a cultural dichotomy that everyone calls a crime of passion, but which is a perfect femicide.
• Investigators Leiva and Urquiza, both detectives and companions: a secret that turns into intrigue and ends in betrayal.
• Sex, power and gender, key concepts of Ilabaca’s poetry, are explored in his noir fiction.

Paula Ilabaca

2015 – Pablo Neruda Award
2014 – Municipality of Santiago, Floral Games Award
2010 – Literary Press Criticism Award in Chile