Los Voraces 2019

Forlagets egen omtale

The rules of "The Greatest Tournament in Chess History," the $20 million Sheldrake Memorial Tournament, held in Los Voraces, 2019, are: no seconds, no agents, no computers, no entourages, no pagers, no phone calls, no outside contact of any kind. The fourteen greatest chess players in the world gather to compete for money, fame, and eccentricity - and start turning up dead. Everyone is under suspicion.

This fabulous chess mystery novel is full of game scores and diagrams - some pretty amazing games are played at Los Voraces! It's all told from the point of view of the arbiter, who is quickly drawn from his role as observer to that of target and suspect. With five rounds to go, five corpses have been discovered. Just who is the serial killer with a preference for 2700-rated grandmasters?

Grandmaster ANDY SOLTIS is the author of dozens of chess books, including these from McFarland: Chess Lists, 2d ed. (2002), Frank Marshall (1993; British Chess Federation Book of the Year), Soviet Chess 1917-1991 (2000; U.S. Chess Federation Historical Book of the Year) and The 100 Best Chess Games of the 20th Century, Ranked (2000). Eight times champion of the world famous Marshall Chess Club, Soltis is an editor and journalist at the New York Post and a columnist for Chess Life. He lives in New York City.

This story FIRST appeared, in somewhat different form, as a serial of monthly installments on the Chess Cafe website (www.chesscafe.com), beginning in September 2001. I've tried to remain faithful to chess tournament traditions. The pairings follow the standard sequence for a 14-player round robin tournament. The FIDE laws mentioned are real (with the exception of the "anti-hair pulling rule"). And, yes, there is a poison called Compound 1080.

Some readers have wondered about the games. Most of them are real, some of them were played by me. A few are elaborations of long-forgotten games. The eight queens game from the Friday, August 23 chapter was composed by Dr. Julio Cesar Infantozzi of Montevideo, Uruguay.

Author´s Note