Claudia Piñeiro Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Claudia Pineiro is a scriptwriter and author who has won numerous international and national prizes. Among her many prizes include the prestigious Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz Prize for her novel “Crack in the Wall.”

Pineiro has made a name for herself writing bestselling crime fiction novels which have been a hit in her native Argentina, Latin America, and all over the globe.

Many of her novels have been adapted into film and La Nacion the prestigious newspaper reported that Claudia Pineiro is only third after Cortazar and Borges when it comes to the most translated authors in Argentina.
In more recent times, Pineiro has become very active in the quest for the recognition of authors as workers under a legal framework in Argentina. Her fiction has also increasingly become ideologically and politically committed.
She published “Thursday Night Widows” her debut novel in 2009 and has since published more than 7 works of fiction.

As for how she started, Claudia Pineiro has often asserted that she started early as she was doing it ever since she knew how to write. As soon as she began going to school and learned the alphabet, she was off to the races with her stories.
Nonetheless, she always found it very hard to think of herself as a writer given that there was nobody in her family that had ever been involved in the world of literature and art.

What she always believed was that she would get to work full-time in a more reasonable career and pen her stories during her time off. During much of that time, she never thought of writing as something she could do as a career in and of itself.
It was not until she was about thirty that she found a way to combine her job and writing. Before then she had earned her economic degree graduating with honors.

She would then work in economics for several years and during this time began writing stories. She used to get off work in the evenings and take creative writing classes to improve her writing.

The first story she ever wrote is what would then become the 2011 published novel “All Yours.” It took her about two to three years to finish writing which is the average length of time for writing most of her novels.

As for how she got into crime fiction writing, Claudia Pineiro has often said that she sort of stumbled into it. She never sat down to pen a crime fiction novel until “Betty Boo.”

She never said to herself that she was penning a crime fiction work as everything just crept up on her while she was in the middle of writing her manuscript.

Claudia Pineiro was telling her story and at some point crime appeared, the characters appeared and then a bizarre mystery resulted in a quest for truth.

Once she published her novel, critics, booksellers, and editors called it Roman noir. The same thing happened with all four of her first novels.

Claudia Pineiro’s “Thursday Night Widows” is the author’s clever debut that won her the Clarin Prize for fiction in Argentina.

The work is set in Altos de la Cascada an estate behind guardhouses, gates reinforced by barriers, and high perimeter walls. Just outside it is the Santa Maria de los Tigrecitos neighborhood, the city, the highway, and the rest of the world.
The families living in the former will do anything to maintain their lifestyle even if it is unethical. Among the families, a group of several friends have weekly meetings away from their wives, domestic workers, and children.
The women who find themselves excluded from the men’s weekly activities have come to refer to themselves as the “Thursday Widows.”

However, the routine is broken one night and from this, we come to learn of the dark side of a perfect life and a country that is falling apart. The men who have a habit of meeting at each other’s houses every Thursday night are found dead.
The quest to resolve the mystery of their deaths provides the backdrop for a closer look into the luxurious lives of several families.

It reveals the false appearances and reveals secrets behind the facade of luxury and closed security fences that hide condescension, mistreatment, and unhappiness.

“Betty Boo” by Claudia Pineiro is a work set in La Maravillosa, which seems to have finally achieved tranquility.

But then a man named Pedro Chazaretta is found dead. He was found sitting on his favorite chair, his throat slit, a bloody knife in hand, and an empty bottle of whiskey at his side.

The evidence points to suicide but soon doubts surface as a vigilante could have been involved in some form of revenge for the death of the man’s wife three years earlier.

El Tribuno the most popular newspaper in Argentina runs in-depth reports about the death written by an inexperienced, young journalist who works with a retired writer named Nurit Iscar.
Jaime Brena the former head of the major crime department had been transferred but decides to get involved anyway so that he can help Nurit whom he secretly admires.

It is a captivating work of fiction that draws a vivid portrait of Argentina and sheds light on the relationship between power and journalism.

She also shows us a world of controls and limits in which despite everything it is always possible to hope and build bridges again.

Claudia Pineiro’s “Elena Knows” looks like quite a simple story of a woman who is afflicted with Parkinson’s disease. For Elena, every day is a huge struggle as she can barely live life on her own even with medication.
Rita her daughter recently took her own life but Elena believes it was murder and not suicide. She intends to prove her thesis given that the police have closed the case.

She calls in an old debt and has to head across town by cab, subway, and foot which is excruciating given her debilitating illness.

Making her way across the town, we get snippets into her past and her life with her daughter. Through her journey as she seeks justice for her daughter, “Elena Knows” unravels the hidden facts of hypocrisy and authoritarianism in our society.