Winner of the Premio Planeta-the Spanish-speaking world’s richest literary prize

The spirit of Stieg Larsson visits Mexico City (Kirkus): Milena, or The Most Beautiful Femur in the World is a pulse-pounding international political thriller about sex, power, and information-and the extreme lengths people go to get them.

When Milena’s lover and protector, the chief of Mexico’s most important newspaper, dies in her arms, she knows it’s only a matter of time before the ruthless thugs behind the human-trafficking ring that kidnapped her from her Croatian village catch her and force her back into sex slavery.

Soon, three comrades bound together by childhood friendships, romantic entanglements, and a restless desire for justice are after her as well-but for different reasons. The new chief of the newspaper, columnist Tomas Arizmendi, must retrieve Milena’s mysterious black book before the media empire he has inherited is torn asunder, while dubious intelligence expert Jaime Lemus wants to use the sensitive information the book contains about the crimes of the world’s power elite to further his political puppeteering. Lastly, the noblest of the trio, rising politician Amelia Navarro has made it her mission to protect women and children from the abuses of men in power.

Told at a heartracing pace and full of the journalistic detail and sly humor that Mexican master Jorge Zepeda Patterson has become renowned for, Milena, or The Most Beautiful Femur in the World is a romp across Europe and the Americas that traces the vast networks of capital, data, crime, and coerced labor that bind together today’s globalized world. Yet, in the beautiful and tenacious Milena, we are reminded that the survivors of the darker facets of modernity are not mere statistics, but living, breathing, individuals.