Lanzarote burns between the pages: when a noir novel dares to look the island in the face

There are novels that use a territory as a simple setting. And there are others that turn that territory into a character. La isla en llamas, the first novel by Mar Arias Couce, seems to belong to this second category. Lanzarote does not appear solely as a backdrop. It is in the heat, in the streets, in the waste, in housing, in tourism, in inequalities, in social conflicts and, above all, in that feeling so difficult to explain that someone who knows an island has when they begin to recognize it behind the fiction. The novel was published in September 2026 by Editorial Siete Islas, has 244 pages and is presented as a work of crime fiction and mystery.

The starting point has something of literary provocation. An island that burns. Some containers set on fire. A charred corpse. A journalist. An inspector. And a question that begins to grow behind the flames: what is being tried to be hidden. The official synopsis places Berta Muñoz and Miguel Toledo facing a succession of fires that end up turning fire into a tool to hide the truth.

But probably that's where the truly interesting part of the book begins. Because the fire functions as a police plot, but also as a metaphor. Fire allows for the investigation of a crime. However, around the crime, another reality appears. That of an island subjected to tensions that do not need to be invented because they are part of everyday conversations.

The author herself has explained that she wanted to use the thriller to tell real problems of Lanzarote, including floods, garbage, illegal occupation and the burning of containers. She also pointed out that she decided not to expressly identify the island in the novel, although those who know Lanzarote can recognize it.

Therein lies, probably, one of the most interesting bets of La isla en llamas. Not calling Lanzarote Lanzarote. Turning it into a recognizable literary island. Changing names without erasing traces. Creating fiction without making the reality that inspires it disappear completely.

It is a particularly suggestive procedure when the author knows the territory she writes about from the inside. Mar Arias Couce was born in Cartagena, grew up in Cáceres and has been living in Lanzarote for 27 years. Furthermore, she studied Information Sciences, specializing in Journalism, and has developed her professional career in the island's media outlets.

And that journalistic experience seems important for understanding the novel. Berta Muñoz is not simply a protagonist who investigates. She is also a journalist who has to decide what to do with what she discovers. The investigation then ceases to be solely the search for a culprit. It becomes a reflection on the responsibility of telling.

This aspect is especially interesting because the novel introduces a question that belongs to both journalism and literature: what do we do with what we know? Investigating does not simply mean discovering. It also means selecting. Contrasting. Contextualizing. Deciding what is told and what consequences what is told can have.

The author's journalistic perspective allows this issue to carry particular weight. A recently published analysis in Lancelot Digital highlights how the character of Berta allows for a reflection on the journalistic profession and the responsibility behind information.

But La isla en llamas does not seem to want to become an essay disguised as a novel. That would be one of its main risks. Social information can devour fiction when the author intends to explain too much. Here, given the known structure and the author's statements, the intention is different: to use the noir novel as a vehicle.

First comes the mystery. Then the questions appear. And that is important. Because a noir novel works when it manages to make the reader want to know what happened. But it can reach another dimension when, while searching for the culprit, it begins to wonder about the setting in which the crime occurred.

The garbage then has a double function. It is a narrative element and a social problem. The burning containers serve to trigger the investigation, but they also refer to a recognizable reality in Lanzarote. The local press has precisely linked the novel to real episodes of container fires and conflicts related to waste management.

And there arises a particularly powerful question: what happens when that which seems like fiction turns out to be too recognizable? The reader from Lanzarote may find themselves in a peculiar situation. They may read seeking entertainment and end up encountering their own island. They may search for a killer and find themselves in a discussion about housing. They may follow a police investigation and end up thinking about tourism. They may enter a crime novel out of curiosity and leave it looking at a trash container in a different way.

The novel also incorporates issues such as migration, racism, social inequalities, housing, employment, and tourism. These matters appear integrated into specific characters and situations, preventing them from functioning solely as a discourse added to the plot.

Because Lanzarote has been presented externally for decades as a territory of extraordinary beauty. Volcanoes. Beaches. Landscape. Tourism. César Manrique. Architecture. Nature. All of that is Lanzarote. But it is not all of Lanzarote. There is also the island of those who work. Of those who look for housing. Of those who suffer the price of rents. Of those who depend on public services under pressure. Of those who arrived from other places and ended up making the island their home.

And it seems that Mar Arias Couce wants to write precisely about that less photogenic Lanzarote. About the one that doesn't usually appear in the tourist brochure. About the one that exists when the hotel lights go out. About the one that remains behind the postcard.

That is why the title acquires a special strength. The island on fire does not need all of Lanzarote to be literally burning. It is enough for the reader to perceive that beneath the surface there is an accumulation of problems, tensions, and contradictions. The fire thus becomes a literary image. It burns the containers. It burns the evidence. It burns certainties. And it forces one to look.

The choice of a journalist as the protagonist is also significant. Detective fiction is full of investigators. Police officers. Detectives. Judges. Criminals. Witnesses. But introducing a journalist means adding another form of investigation. The police look for evidence to solve a crime. Journalism seeks information to explain a reality. When both investigations meet, the boundaries between crime fiction and social novel begin to disappear.

The author had previously published the short story collection "El hombre al que le gustaban las manzanas," edited by the Publications Service of the Cabildo de Lanzarote. "La isla en llamas" now represents her first foray into the novel genre.

And there is another element that increases the work's interest. According to some statements by the author, the novel is conceived as the first installment of a trilogy, and the second part is already written. The author has also indicated that she intends to show Lanzarote with its positive and negative aspects, moving away from a vision exclusively associated with a tourist paradise.

That makes this first book more than a self-contained story. It could be the beginning of a literary map of Lanzarote. A map built from the noir genre. A map where every fire can hide a story. Where every character can represent a reality. Where every street can hold a memory. And where the island ends up acquiring its own personality.

There is something especially interesting in a journalist who has worked in Lanzarote for decades deciding to use fiction precisely to tell its story. The journalist reports on reality. The novelist can delve into what data cannot always explain. She can invent a character to show a social truth. She can create a corpse to talk about a city. She can set a dumpster on fire to illuminate what normally remains hidden. She can change names to say, paradoxically, more about a territory.

And therein lies perhaps the greatest conceptual virtue of "La isla en llamas": that the mystery does not seem limited to discovering who is behind the fire. The real mystery may be something else. What island have we built while everyone looked the other way? The answer, naturally, belongs to the reader.

Because a novel of these characteristics should not dictate conclusions. It should provoke questions. And if, after closing the book, it manages to make someone look at Lanzarote with different eyes, it will have achieved something that goes far beyond solving a police plot. It will have managed to bring a real island into literature.

And perhaps that is the true combustion of "La isla en llamas": not the one that destroys, but the one that illuminates.

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