Celebrated Female Thriller Author Reveals True Identity: Three Men

Carmen Mola, a beloved female thriller author in Spain, dropped an enormous surprise when “she” won one of the most prestigious book prizes in Spain. CNN reports that three male TV writers—Agustín Martínez, Jorge Díaz, and Antonio Mercero—blew the Spanish literary world’s minds when they went on stage Friday to collect the Planeta and reveal that they, in fact, were the author of the acclaimed book The Beast, a historical thriller about a serial killer in 1834. Mola initially purported to be a “female university professor who lived in Madrid with her husband and children.” In an interview with Spain’s El Mundo newspaper, the three authors said that “it is not lost on anyone that the idea of a university professor and mother of three, who teaches algebra classes in the morning and, in the afternoon, writes novels of savage and macabre violence has been a good marketing operation.”