Oriol Canals: "I like that good characters can do horrible things, because they do them for some reason"

BarcelonaOriol Canals (Barcelona, 1978) took his first steps as a writer in 2013 with Fills de mala mare (Base). Since then, he has built a path in crime fiction that includes the titles Diví (Base, 2018), Els sentinelles de la llibertat (Rosa dels Vents, 2023) and No dormiràs (Rosa dels Vents, 2024). With the latter, Canals –who besides writing is the business director of ARA– placed himself among the best-selling writers of 2025 in Catalonia. Now, in the novel El cinquè cor (Rosa dels Vents, 2026), Canals unfolds a new story starring a doctor who is a world authority in the field of cardiology. The diagnosis of a serious illness will coincide with his 50th birthday and with a macabre gift that will set the pace of the story: a box with three human hearts and two empty spaces. Through this protagonist, an investigative journalist, and a Mossos d'Esquadra officer, Canals articulates a plot through which he provides an X-ray of evil, unbridled ambition, and contemporary fears.

El cinquè cor is your fifth book. Have you approached it differently compared to the previous ones, taking into account the experience acquired?

— They say that an athlete reaches their peak at 28 or 30 years old. It is when they are technically mature and physically in great shape. But a writer does not reach a peak; they are always going upwards. The four previous books have served me to craft this fifth one. I have approached things in a different way and I have tried to pour all the accumulated experience into the new project.

Why did you choose the medical field as the main setting?

— Due to life circumstances, the medical field is very much incorporated into my daily life. I see its virtues, but often I also see its flaws. I was interested in exploring what happens when medicine and power intersect. It is a very good ground to ask yourself questions in the form of a thriller. 

The protagonist cardiologist is a great eminence with very high recognition throughout the world. Why were you interested in the main character being someone with so much exposure and so much knowledge?

— Jesús Maria Barceló is 50 years old and is the best cardiologist in the world. But in every career, in any profession, there are lights and shadows. No one does their job 100% well, be it a doctor, teacher, lawyer, journalist, or salesperson. I was interested in the level of maturity of a doctor who has become a benchmark, who has learned from his mistakes, and who has a past that could return at some point in the novel.

“The vast majority of doctors believe they are a divinity”, you write. How does the job, and the fact of having human lives in their hands, condition the way the characters act?

— I am speaking in general terms, as far as I have been able to know doctors or as far as the sources have served to document me. Doctors have a lot of power, and there is this point of divinity. They always want to save the patient and they have a very great power, which no other profession has. But doctors look at patients with a great deal of curiosity. I understand that they cannot take their work home and that they must keep a distance, because otherwise they would go crazy. For their psychology it is good to create a barrier. They are also human, and I was interested in exploring that.

How did you work on the humanity of the characters, especially those who act in a more immoral way or make the most questionable decisions?

— In my books, I often stretch the ambition, the ego, the desire to prosper of the characters, this wild professional liberalism. They are people who also have a family, who may have children or a husband they love. From within, I feel like mistreating them more, but I have to put myself in their shoes, no matter how wretched they may be. There is always side A and side B of people. There are people with very questionable jobs who will return home and have a life. This double game is fun and healthy. It is easy for people to be dazzled by what they see on the screen, hear on the radio, or read in the newspaper. As a media professional, I try not to do that, because there are many things behind people that must be questioned.

On this occasion, you once again incorporate the world of media into the plot. Gabriela is an investigative journalist for La Tribuna, a medium-sized newspaper in Catalonia. How does working at ARA, a newspaper that has precisely given a strong boost to the investigation area in recent years, inspire you?

— I have a blast working in the media, it’s a tremendous source of inspiration. A newspaper is a non-stop stream of circumstances, of meeting people, of experiencing situations. I’m not a journalist, but I constantly read the news, obviously from ARA but also from all the media I can understand, national and international. I wanted to highlight this journalistic work. Society should take as a reference the media that uncover societal problems. And I wanted to explain that all of this is costly and that there are people working hard behind it. 

The double standard is not limited only to the protagonist, but also to other characters, such as Gabriela and Omar, a Mossos d'Esquadra officer with whom the journalist has a clandestine relationship. Why do you grant them this duality?

— Because in life there are no absolute truths, not everything is black and white, there is a lot of grey. Someone says that a person has done something very wrong. What led them to do this? Why do they act like that? What past do they have? From Omar and Gabriela's plot, I also extract that you can never expose yourself to society as you really are. I wanted to stretch it like chewing gum to delve into the depths of the characters' feelings by placing them in extreme situations. We all like to think that, when faced with a borderline situation, we will behave in the best possible way. But until you find yourself in it, it is impossible to know. I like that good characters can do horrible things, because they do them for a reason.

Does fiction serve you to do justice when reality does not allow it?

— I always joke that I kill people in books that I cannot kill in real life. In a way, all writers who dedicate ourselves to this genre try to channel concerns through stories. However, I have promised myself that I will never write anything autobiographical. Regarding justice, it is difficult to believe in it, although it must be done, because otherwise this would be the Wild West. Sometimes I see things that make me angry and I wonder to what extent there is really justice. I suppose books are a way to be able to create it.

How does your creative process work?

— I am very methodical, I work like a map writer. I need to have everything I want to happen measured to the millimeter. Working on detective novels forces me to follow a method, because otherwise it is difficult for the whole mechanism to hold together. Starting from an idea, I summarize the book in one sentence, in five sentences, in 10, and in 10 pages. If I like what I see, I develop the characters, and if I still like it, then I write the script. I use a film script program called Final Draft. It helps me to give it the rhythm I want, to make short chapters.

How did you document yourself on this occasion?

— In this case, I had to look for a lot of information about a specific disease; how it is caused, how it manifests, how it is treated, and how transplants work. Dr. Georgia Sarquella, head of cardiology at Sant Joan de Déu, helped me a great deal. I would not have been able to write the book without her. I was also helped by Dr. Sandra Rovira, a pediatrician at Vall d’Hebron, especially regarding hospital operations and transplant protocols.

With your previous novel, No dormiràs, you entered the list of best-selling fiction books in Catalan in 2025. It is your most successful book: you have sold more than 20,000 copies of it. How has this experience marked you?

— A great deal. For me, there is a clear before and after. It is a beastly phenomenon that has left me with a very big gift: thousands of people have trusted the way I tell stories, they have liked it, and they have been telling each other. I could not be happier. It was the first genre book among the best-sellers of Sant Jordi and the fifth best-selling book of 2025. If I lift my head and look up, I see names like Xavier Bosch and Sílvia Soler. It makes me incredibly excited.

Has it made you dizzy when it comes to writing the following?

— No, because I have a great advantage over many people: my job is at ARA, the pressure I have is to get up at seven in the morning, take the child to school, go to the newspaper and work. I have a blast writing, it's my hobby. I have always played handball and I love it very much. Now that my knees are rusty, writing is my other handball.