Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Publisher – Jo Fletcher Books

Published – Out Now

Price – £18.99 hardback £7.99 Kindle eBook

Montserrat has always been overlooked. She's a talented sound editor, but she's left out of the boys' club running the film industry in '90s Mexico City. And she's all but invisible to her best friend Tristán, a charming if faded soap opera star, even though she's been in love with him since childhood.


Then Tristán discovers his new neighbour is the cult horror director Abel Urueta, and the legendary auteur claims he has a way to change their lives - even if his tales of a Nazi occultist imbuing magic into highly volatile silver nitrate stock sounds like sheer fantasy. The magic film was never finished, which is why, Urueta swears, his career vanished overnight. He is cursed.

Now the director wants Montserrat and Tristán to help him shoot the missing scene and lift the curse . . . but Montserrat soon notices a dark presence following her.

As they work together to unravel the mystery of the film and the obscure occultist who once roamed their city, Montserrat and Tristán might just find out that sorcerers and magic are not only the stuff of movies . . .

Horror has many flavours within it and I’ll always have a soft spot for the horror adventure. When people stumble into a hidden world and must navigate the supernatural world or die in the attempt. Its that hidden world and history just under the edge of our own that is tantalising and as always, some fun with the conflict between modern day characters and typically some historical significance. In Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s excellent Silver Nitrate we get a love letter to this style of horror tale with an additional love of the movies thrown in combined with some pitch perfect character work.

It’s the 1993 and Mexico’s movie-making scene is in a period of transition as US film dominate the market and there is consolidation of various production houses. One of the best sound engineers is Montserrat but by virtue of being a woman and nearly forty increasingly her bosses are edging her out by cutting hours and withholding bonuses. But with bills to pay and a sister suffering from cancer Montserrat needs a new income stream. Her best friend from childhood is Tristan; one the darling of the tv scene but a scandal dragged him under and made him unemployable. He coasts through life and various relationship breakups while also haunted by his past. Tristan discovers one of his new neighbours is none other than the famous 1960s horror director Abel Ureta; whom both saw his movies as kids, and he is a wealth of famous anecdotes. But he also has a tale few have told, about the lost movie Beyond the Yellow Door; Ureta’s final horror film that no one has ever seen before he vanished into obscurity.  It’s a tale of aging starlets, enigmatic sorcerers and potential Nazis who sought out power. Ureta convinces Montserrat and Tristan to help him finish a key scene that may cure the movie’s curse as it was never completed. It does seem to initially boost the trio’s luck but then death and danger stalk them and certain people living and possibly dead want to get hold of the movie for a final showing.

As always Moreno-Garcia knows how to play with a format. This is a found footage movie plot turned into a very effective and importantly character focused novel that explores a number of issues along the way. The opening is fairly non-supernatural as it focuses on us getting to know our lead characters and 1990s Mexico. By grounding us with these two characters, making us understand and like them then we’ve got someone to care about when the proverbial hits the fan. There is some subtle gender swapping too. Montserrat is the more active, sarcastic and pragmatic character more likely to just wear a horror movie t-shirt; work all day and forget to eat. Tristan initially comes across as a vain airhead but cleverly we see this is a guy who’s worked himself up from poverty and while he went off the tracks with wealth, drugs and partying he is also more kind-hearted and sensitive than he’d like you top think. They’re a duo who’ve known each other since childhood; know their behaviours, buttons and have a lovely way of bickering and being there fore each other that suggests if they both thought about it their friendship could be more. This is never something near the top of their agendas.

By spending time on them we understand why they think dabbling with potentially cursed movies may help their families, bills and careers. The novel is having a lot of fun with the secret history of 1960s Mexican cinema as we find Ureta got involved with an aging movie star desperate for more glory and a more sinister man who claimed to know magic and who may or may nt have been a WW2 Nazi. Ureta’s story is full of depth, betrayals and danger and it all sounds plausible with added mentions of Alistair Crowley and various cults of the 20th century. That this famed movie’s last known reels are hidden in Ureta’s fridge (old film on silver nitrate is infamously explosive when near heat) is the icing on the cake and the trigger for the story to get moving.

So far this all sounds a great adventure (and it is) but once the new scene is re-cut with the trio’s narration then Moreno-Garcia dials up the horror aspects. Tristan in particular finds himself haunted by the ghost of his former girlfriend and Montserrat finds herself feeling constantly watched and sucked into a magician’s life story and thoughts on how magic can be real. Indeed, her own powers appear t be awakened. The trio also find themselves in danger from hidden groups who both want the movie for themselves. Empty houses not empty; men with dogs that appear to drip ink and sinister older ladies who know far too much darken the tale and we realise these groups are prepared to do anything even murder to get what they want. The way the book makes us care for our characters makes us really feel for them when they’re now in terrible danger.

As often with Moreno-Garcia’s work there is also a social theme, and one horror as a genre too often looks at – class and racism. The story explores how European cults constantly disparaged South America countries for being ‘lesser races’ yet wanted their beliefs and customs to be appropriated within their own rituals; we also explore the ongoing obsession in certain parts of Mexican society for having ‘pure’ bloodlines that can be said are European rather than being part of the indigenous populations or more recent immigrant groups. Montserrat and Tristran are from both those latter groups and soon find themselves up against the powerful rich and racist upper tiers of society adding additional dimensions to the story particularly as Montserrat finds a dead cultist trying to persuade her to take up his work. It all comes to a tense and dangerous final set of scenes where both leads are tested and must rely on each other to get them through it.

Silver Nitrate is a brilliant adventure that has a central duo to pull for but as I find with all Moreno-Garcia’s work there is both brilliant character work and thought provoking looks at themes that made this a hugely satisfying read. Fans of horror as well as great contemporary fantasy should definitely give this a try. Strongly recommended!