The Sentinel

The Sentinel by Mark Oldfield is a historical crime novel in which contemporary forensic investigator Ana Maria Galindez takes on the investigation of deaths from fifty-seven years before, in the middle of the Spanish Civil War. The book follows Galindez and her partner's investigation, as well as the life and sadistic nature of anti-hero Leopoldo Guzman, head of the secret police of the period, the Brigada Especial. The book moves between 2010 and the early 1950s, with moments that move even further back into the 1930s.

The novel opens with the discovery of fifteen bodies, hastily buried in an old mineshaft. The discovery takes place in 2010 when forensic investigator Ana Maria Galindez is working for the guardia civil. The bodies have been buried for nearly fifty-seven years, a fact that startles Galindez and her team. They appear to have been victims of a mass shooting; fourteen of the victims were killed by a single bullet delivered to the back of the head. The fifteenth victim, for reasons unknown to Galindez, was brutally garroted. His neck was so badly brutalized that his skull had nearly detached itself from his spinal cord.

Galindez begins to investigate the crimes, which happened during the brutal Spanish Civil War of the 1950s. Soon, Galindez pinpoints a possible culprit – Comandante Leopoldo Guzman, the head of the Brigada Especial. Guzman is a fascinating man, a sadistic and vicious killer who seemed to take pleasure in the atrocities he helped the Spanish government to commit. Galindez quickly becomes entranced by Guzman's personality and the unknown circumstances of his disappearance in the late 1950s.



As Galindez and her romantic partner begin to learn more about Guzman and about the bodies found in the abandoned mine shaft, they are targeted by enemies. Galindez is apparently not the only one interested in Guzman's actions and his disappearance at the end of the Civil War. Soon, Galindez and her partner are fighting against contemporary enemies while uncovering the heinous deeds of a man who, by all accounts, is long dead.

The story jumps back and forth between the events of the Spanish Civil War, the acts committed under Franco's government, and modern-day sleuthing. The book is part of a larger legacy of Spanish people looking back at the events that occurred during this period, to find reconciliation and healing. The most action-packed events in the book come near the end of Franco's government in the 1950s, when Guzman had become so corrupt and powerful that he could not be taken down. An evil man, there is not much to redeem him, but he remains an entrancing character; sometimes he appears nearly human, as when he falls in love with the widow of a Republican, but then he demoralizes himself again when he becomes the cause of her violent humiliation at the hands of Spanish guards.

Guzman is an interesting character in part because of the mystery of his background and his demise – he spends much of the book trying to hide any trace of his background or who he was before he came to power, and nobody is sure where he went, or whether he died in the late 1950s. Galindez, using modern technology and her capabilities as a detective, uncovers some of the secrets of Guzman's life, and the lives of the people he murdered during his campaign of revenge and brutality.



The Sentinel, the first book in a trilogy about the Spanish Civil War, is followed by The Exile and The Dead. Mark Oldfield lived in Paris and Spain for some time, and much of his research is based on conversations with Spaniards about the rule of Fransisco Franco, who lost power in 1975, the year before Oldfield first began to visit. Oldfield has also worked as a criminological researcher and taught at a number of universities.