Category Archives: Spain

Review: OR THE BULL KILLS YOU by Jason Webster

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In Valencia, Spain it is the beginning of the Spring Fiesta and Chief Inspector Max Cámara is unhappy. At the last minute he has been forced to stand in for his boss as the honorary master of ceremonies for the day’s bullfight. Cámara despises bullfighting. But he performs the duty with competence if not enjoyment and is relaxing in a nearby bar afterwards when word reaches him that Jorge Blanco, the matador who had so masterfully beaten the bull in the day’s fight, has been found dead. In charge of the investigation Cámara struggles with his own personal demons, office and city politics and a plethora of potential suspects in his quest to solve the case.

Blanco was famous and much-loved, almost single-handedly responsible for reviving the city’s interest in bullfighting. Is that why he was killed? There are local elections due in which one party has made the banning of bullfighting its top priority which could have prompted someone to want Blanco out of the way. But the fighter’s personal life is also ripe ground for suspects as there are rumours about his sexuality which seem at odds with his engagement to a much-loved entertainer.

Surprisingly, to me, the thing I enjoyed most about this book was its richly depicted setting which included more information about bullfighting than I could ever have anticipated being intrigued by. Which is why it is sometimes good to read things you think you might not like. Webster, who is not a native Spaniard but has lived there for twenty years and has published several highly acclaimed travel books about the country, really does bring the city alive for the reader with quite lyrical descriptions of the city, the festival, the food and the bullfighting. Early on Cámara meets a female journalist who is so much an acknowledged expert about the sport that she was the only reporter who had ever interviewed Jorge Blanco. She and Cámara debate the merits, or lack thereof, of the sport and she fills him in on any history and symbolism that might be relevant to his investigation and it is these exchanges that allow readers to absorb information about a subject most of them probably know little about. I really liked the way this was done, especially they way it enabled Webster to present both sides of the debate without being judgemental.

The rest of the book was not quite as successful for me. I was not as taken by the character of Max Cámara as other reviewers seem to have been which of course is a highly personal thing. Perhaps I have had my fill of alcoholic detectives who argue with their superiors and are, in the end, fairly self-absorbed (in this instance Cámara’s inner life revolves around his worries over his fertility which I literally could not have cared less about). Ultimately I didn’t find him quite engaging enough to care that much whether he survived the ever-looming threat of dismissal but I can’t say he was a badly drawn character, merely one that did not appeal very much to me. I found the female characters who included Blanco’s fiancée Carmen, the journalist and Cámara’s girlfriend a little flat and forgettable though I can’t really put my finger on a reason for this.

As a mystery the novel mostly worked although the ending was a bit too contrived for my liking but that is a fairly common experience for me. I think writing believable but engaging endings must be very very hard. However the investigation itself was suspenseful and kept me guessing in just the right way.

OR THE BULL KILLS YOU provided a real sense of being transported to the streets of Valencia, something I suspect was the result of the mixture of Webster’s writing and an excellent narration of the audio book by Mark Meadows whose Spanish pronunciation sounded wonderful in my ears. I think most people would like the book and some will love it, perhaps especially those who have not read quite as much crime fiction as I seem to have done (the people who all recommended it to me are occasional readers of the genre rather than die hard fans).

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OR THE BULL KILLS YOU has been reviewed at, Euro Crime, It’s A Crime and The View From the Blue House

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My rating 3/5
Narrator Mark Meadows
Publisher AudioGo [2011]
ASIN B005IHIACK
Length 11 hours 34 minutes
Format audio (mp3)
Book Series #1 in a new series?
Source I bought it
Creative Commons Licence
This work by http://reactionstoreading.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Review: A Short Cut to Paradise by Teresa Solana

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The private consultants who aren’t quite detectives who made their debut in A Not So Perfect Crime are back for another adventure among the upper echelons of Barcelona society. This time they are tasked with proving that Amadeu Cabestany was not responsible for the murder of famous novelist Marina Dolç The police have arrested him on the grounds that he was heard to threaten Marina and on the night she was killed she had won a prestigious literary award that he was sure he was about to win. But his agent and some-time lover does not believe in his guilt and she turns to Eduard and Borja for assistance. They discover that Amadeu’s alibi is very shaky as there are no witnesses to his leaving the hotel before Dolç’s death and being mugged at a local disco and no one else seems to have much of a motive. They do however start to learn some interesting things about the famous author’s life.

There’s something about a holiday week that calls for lighter than normal reading and I was quite chuffed to find this book unread on my shelves as I had such fond memories of the first book in the series. Happily this one too is clever and funny and thoroughly engaging; perfect for reading on a warm summer day with a glass (or two) of sangria. It’s probably not the book to reach for if you like your mystery solving to be at the forefront for the length of the novel but if you don’t mind the odd (in some cases very odd) tangent or three you could do a lot worse.

Eduard is a former lefty radical who spent 20 years as a middle-class banker before setting up in business with his twin brother Borja (formerly known as Pep). We see most of the tale through his eyes as he recounts the brothers’ attempts to uncover evidence and a suspect or two. Though not as strongly as he was in the first book, he is still vaguely put out by Borja’s social climbing, especially when it requires Eduard to wear classy suits rather than his preferred jeans and otherwise operate out of his comfort zone (heaven forbid he must spend a night in a five-star hotel). But at heart the relationship between the two brothers is sweet and a definite highlight of the novel, being the source of much humour.

The rest of the humour comes from the observations about local society. Although I know nothing about Catalan literary circles the depictions of the social events with public displays of bonhomie hiding private hatreds and petty jealousies was pitch-perfect. I just inserted the names of local authors in the roles of literary versus popular fiction authors to make the humour complete.Solana seems to take great relish in satirising literary circles and I suspect she particularly enjoyed writing the scene in which most of the players are accidentally drugged so that their true natures are on full display.

More poignant moments in the novel come from the short chapters told from perspectives other than Eduard’s. Among the ‘character vignettes’ we meet a man driven to undertake an armed robbery even though he has no criminal record, get a surreal glimpse of prison life for Amadeu who the other prisoners stay clear of due to his resemblance to a movie murderer and his seeming ability to cause grown men to die at his feet and even briefly meet a long-suffering policewoman who has to wrangle a rookie cop with a big mouth. All of these are delightful interludes as well as providing little nuggets of information which help make sense of the overall story.

The crime’s resolution offered a slightly unsatisfactory note in that it didn’t quite make sense but overall I thoroughly enjoyed this slightly surreal and very witty tale of literary madness which gave me one more reason to be glad I’m a reader not a writer.  I am pleased to learn (via excellent Spanish-reading blogger Jose Ignacio at The Game’s Afoot) that a third book has been released. Translation now please.

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A Short Cut to Paradise has been reviewed at Euro Crime, International Noir Fiction (though noir this definitely isn’t) and Lizzie’s Literary Life

I’m slightly cheating in using this as the last book for my What’s In a Name challenge in the category of book with a size in the title. I suppose short isn’t officially a size but it will have to do as the book I was half way through reading (At Close Quarters) fell into the washing up sink and didn’t really recover as well as I might have hoped.

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My rating 3.5/5
Translator Peter Bush
Publisher Bitter Lemon Press [2011]
ISBN 9781904738558
Length 284 pages
Format paperback
Book Series #2 in the Eduard and Borja series
Source I bought it
Creative Commons Licence
This work by http://reactionstoreading.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Review: Death on a Galician Shore by Domingo Villar

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In the Spanish village of Panxón locals think that fisherman Juan Castelo must have committed suicide by throwing himself overboard from his boat one stormy Sunday morning. But the pathologist convinces Inspector Leo Caldas of the Vigo police that, due to the way the man’s hands were tied, it must have been murder. And so Leo begins a slow and methodical round of interviews of the taciturn locals, becoming frustrated by their unwillingness to tell him anything which advances his investigation. The one glimmer of resolution that he spots early on is that Castelo was one of three men to have survived a tragedy some years before. Some believe that the man who did not survive that tragedy might have returned from the dead to exact his revenge.

As with the first book in this series that is fast becoming a favourite of mine two elements really stand out as memorable. The first of these is the characters who are subtly drawn but entirely engaging. Leo is a very self-contained person, spending much of his time alone though it’s not always clear if this is a deliberate choice. His relationship with his father is a complex and uneasy one though the genuine love between the two is evident even if they often show it by getting cross with each other’s foibles. There is humour too though such as when Leo’s father is visiting his sick brother in hospital and is reminded of his Book of Idiots that has fallen into disuse. After adding the name of his brother’s doctor the Book and its new entries becomes a running joke between the men and it provided a lot of warmth to the story (not to mention an inspiration for me to start my own book as it sounded like a satisfying and healthy way to deal with the idiots one encounters in life). The other key relationship Leo has in this book is with his assistant Rafael (Rafa) Estévez who has calmed down a little since the events depicted in the first book though he is still perplexed by the Galician weather and frustrated by the locals’ inability to answer a question directly. There is some friction between the pair and you never get the sense they will be firm friends but stranger things have happened and I am anxious to see what progress is made in future books (hoping of course that there are more to come).

The setting is the other element of the novel that I simply cannot forget. I love the way Villar paints a picture of this part of Spain, incorporating descriptions of both landscape and people in such a vibrant way that I fell like I have strolled along the shore, watched the fishermen bringing in their early morning hauls, wandered over to the market and, inevitably, found a café at which to eat fresh seafood and sip a glass of wine. In addition to making me wistful for a holiday this is a big part of what makes the book so credible. The lives and environment of the key players are depicted in such a way that their murderous ways seem perfectly believable, even sensible in the circumstances.

I did think this book a bit slower than its predecessor (it’s quite a bit longer) and especially in the first half a little repetitive in the way that Leo and Rafa kept re-interviewing the same people for not much gain. But this did help to generate a sense of the frustration that Leo was experiencing (and police must often experience in real life) and I was more than happy to relax a little and soak up the ambience. The pace and complexity of the investigation kicks up a notch in the second half and I enjoyed the neat but still surprising way the resolution fell into place. Without any of the violence or junk-science common to so many procedurals and brimming with warm characters and an inviting atmosphere this book has a great story and, if only fleetingly, makes you feel like you’ve had a holiday in Spain. Delicious reading.

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Death on a Galician Shore has been reviewed at Crime Scraps, Euro Crime (By Maxine) and The Game’s Afoot

I reviewed Water Blue-Eyes, the first book in this series, last month.

This is one of seven books nominated for this year’s International Dagger award for translated crime fiction which will be announced this Friday (22 July). I managed to read 6 of the 7 which are Anders Roslund & Borge Hellstrom’s Three Seconds, Ernesto Mallo’s Needle in a Haystack, Fred Vargas’ An Uncertain Place, River of Shadows by Valerio Varesi and Andrea Camilleri’s Wings of the Sphinx. I’m afraid time (and a slight lack of inclination) has prevented my from reading Jean-Francois Parot’s The Saint-Florentin Murders. 

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My rating 4.5/5
Translator Sonia Soto
Publisher Hachette Digital [2011]
ISBN 9780748120055
Length 346 pages
Format eBook (ePub)
Book Series #2 in the Leo Caldas series
Source I bought it

Review: Water-Blue Eyes by Domingo Villar

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As this book opens we meet Leo Caldas, a Police Inspector in the Spanish town of Vigo, as he is participating in the weekly radio broadcast Patrol on the Air, during which people can ring in with questions or complaints for the police to investigate. Caldas is a grudging participant in the PR exercise and entertains himself by keeping a running tally of how many enquiries he will need to follow up on and how many he can hand over to the City police. When he’s finished the show he barely has time to sit in his office chair before he and his subordinate, Rafael Estévez, are rushing to attend a luxury apartment building where a man has been killed. The man, local jazz musician Luis Reigosa, has been tied to his bed and suffered horrific burn-like injuries to his stomach and groin but forensic specialists need time to identify the exact cause of death, which doesn’t give Caldas and Estévez many leads with which to begin their investigation.

Several elements of this excellent novel compete for status as the standout feature but in the end they all come together to form the perfect novel. Perhaps the thing I loved most were the characters who are richly drawn and highly believable. Although this is the first novel in which he appears Caldas is a fully formed man whose past we see in glimpses as the current narrative unfolds. His personal life is complicated by an uneasy relationship with his father and a split from the woman in his life due to their differences over the idea of having children. His working life is also complicated, mainly by having to deal with the consequences of Rafael Estévez’ aggression which is generated when he encounters the difficulties of his new home. Poor Estévez is not a native of Galica (the region of northern Spain in which Vigo is situated) and he has struggled to adjust to his new environment. He finds the unpredictable weather and steep streets equally frustrating but worst of all

To Rafael Estévez’ stern Aragonese mind, things were this way or that, got done or didn’t, so it was only with considerable effort that he managed to decipher the ambiguous expressions of his new fellow citizens.

This issue generates much of the warm humour of the book, though I felt a little guilty for laughing at Estévez as I too have a tendency towards literalness and find ambiguity annoying to deal with.

If the local tourist bureau in Galicia hasn’t paid Villar something for his work then they should because my overwhelming desire upon finishing the book was to investigate how much it would cost me to fly there and stay a while. The environment is described beautifully and the relaxed pace of life depicted appeals to me greatly. Even a serious police investigation must stop for deliciously described meals and the occasional paddle in the ocean and I couldn’t help but wish that all of life was prioritised in this way. Of course Caldas manages to have a fascinating conversation about philosophy with other patrons during one memorable lunch and this ends up leading him to an important discovery in his investigation which proves there’s nothing wrong with this way of working at all.

I was undoubtedly pre-disposed to liking this book because of its length. At 167 pages it is tiny in comparison to many of the lengthy tomes published these days but is an absolutely captivating read without any of the dead weight of its competitors. It’s fast, witty, oozing a sense of its location, has terrifically memorable characters and a taut, compelling plot. It is also beautifully readable in its second language, a testament no doubt to the skill of translator Martin Schifino, who has managed to capture the poetic essence of the Spanish very well. This is a true gem of a novel that would be enjoyed by all readers, crime fans or otherwise.

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This book has been reviewed at Crime Scraps, Petrona, Reviewing the Evidence and The Game’s Afoot (where Jose Ignacio read the book in its original Spanish).

I’m using this as the first book for my European leg of this year’s global challenge

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My rating 5/5
Translator Martin Schifino
Publisher Arcadia books/Euro Crime [this translation 2009, original edition 2006]
ISBN 9781906413255
Length 167 pages
Format paperback
Book Series The first in a series to feature Leo Caldas
Source I bought it

Review: A Not So Perfect Crime by Teresa Solana

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In something of a rarity for me I bought this book solely based on the blurb I read at the publisher’s website. It’s the the 13th of 21 books I need to read to complete my extreme global reading challenge and, set in Spain, is the last book on the European leg of this virtual trip.

Eduard and Borja are non-identical twin brothers, though they don’t tell anyone (for reasons that remain a bit murky). Having not seen each other for many years they now run a business together which is a kind of private detective agency (with the emphasis more on the privacy than the detection). Essentially they undertake confidential assignments for Barcelona’s wealthy and influential people. One day a politician with ambitions of his Party’s highest office, Lluis Font, asks them to discover who painted a portrait he found of his wife and to determine if she was having an affair with the painter. He is, he says, troubled by the prospect of a scandal that might damage his chances of further political success. Before long though the brothers find themselves investigating an all together nastier crime than possible infidelity.

It is a book of small details that paint a deliciously funny portrait of the brothers and the wider society in which they live. As the book’s narrator Eduard introduces himself and his brother and explains how it is that no one would know they are brothers unless they were told. Borja is stylish and sophisticated, Eduard prefers corduroy trousers and lace-up shoes; Borja has trotted the globe for twenty years while Eduard worked in a bank; and “Borja is right wing (for aesthetic reasons, he claims) and [Eudard] soldiers on as a non-voting disillusioned left-winger”. How could I not love such a character? Despite these differences the brothers really do get on rather well and as they fumble their way through an investigation which turns more serious than it first appeared their sibling relationship is shown to be quite strong and rather sweet.

I suspect I only scratched the surface of the satirical aspects of the novel as I’m just not that knowledgeable about Catalan politics or society though even I couldn’t miss some of the not-so-gentle gibes as the wealthy were pilloried and juxtaposed with Eduard’s middle class surrounds. These aspects do sometimes take precedence over the mystery, which at times seems like it might never be solved by ‘detectives’ who don’t even carry a camera and who are more concerned with finding a parking spot in crowded Barcelona than employing standard tailing techniques, but there is an old-fashioned whodunnit within this book too. The introduction of a series of possible suspects provides the perfect device for the author to show Catalan society in many of its guises.

Sometimes it takes a while for me to ‘get into’ a book and on other occasions I know within the first few pages that it’s my kind of thing. Happily A Not So Perfect Crime fell into the later category. The book is superbly translated (from the Catalan) by Peter Bush who has retained a speedily flowing and delightfully funny tale. The fact that the story turned out to have a surprisingly thoughtful ending, musing on the subject of justice and whose job it is to hand it out, pushed the book to a four-star rating on my scale. Scrumptious.

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My rating 4/5

Translator Peter Bush Publisher Bitter Lemon Press [this translation 2008, original edition 2006]; ISBN 9781904738343; Length 286 pages

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A Not So Perfect Crime has also been reviewed at Euro Crime (minor spoiler alert though) and Reviewing the Evidence

Review: Inhuman Remains by Quintin Jardine

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Inhuman Remains is this month’s discussion book for my face to face book group.

Primavera Blackstone goes into hiding when she survives the plane crash that she believes was initiated by her ex-husband, Oz Blackstone. However when he dies a few months later she feels it’s safe to come out of hiding, retrieve her young son Tom and head off to Spain to live a life of luxury. Two years after this her Aunt Adrienne shows up and asks Prim to help locate her son Frank who, since he finished his prison sentence for fraud, has been working at a resort in Switzerland but has now disappeared. Prim, having previously helped her ex-husband who was apparently a private investigator as well as being a world-famous actor, agrees to become involved. Mayhem ensues.

Surely Primavera Blackstone is the kind of woman who only exists in the fantasy lives of men? There is no substance to her at all as she flits from being the world’s cleverest woman to the world’s most perfect mother to the world’s best lover while maintaining a nice line in pithy one-liners. Everyone she knows loves her, everyone she knows will risk their own death to save or protect her and everyone she knows is awestruck by her. I, on the other hand, found her tiresome and entirely unbelievable. None of the other characters is memorable enough a day and a half after finishing the book for me to make any kind of comment about them at all.

The plot started at implausible and got sillier from there. There is so much double crossing and triple crossing and parish priests saving the world kind of nonsense that I’d really lost interest well before the last ludicrous and unsatisfying twist. No one seemed to be telling the truth at any point in the story so there really wasn’t any suspense because I had nothing invested in the characters or the story.

I’m quite sure the book is not meant to be taken terribly seriously and I’m quite content with that concept but in such cases I have to find something to like and here I couldn’t. I can’t even sensibly explain why Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody (an equally implausible heroine of adventure tales) makes me smile while Primavera Blackstone just made me cranky but that’s the way it is. Once again though I am out of step with the mainstream because Jardine has published 30 novels including nine previous books featuring Oz Blackstone and they seem to be very popular but I’m afraid I didn’t see much here that would have me hunting down any of his other titles.

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My rating 2/5

Publisher Headline [2009]; ISBN 9780755340224; Length 310 pages

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Inhuman Remains has been reviewed at Mysteries in Paradise