Robert Wilson - Page 1
First British Edition harpercollins (2004) |
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The Silent and the Damned
A Javier Falcon Thriller
One tortured detective. Three disturbing suicides. A hidden world of terror.
Mario Vega is seven years old and his life is about to change forever. Across the street in an exclusive suburb of Seville his father lies dead on the kitchen floor and his mother has been suffocated under her own pillow. It appears to be a suicide pact, but Inspector Jefe Javier Falcon has his doubts when he finds an enigmatic note crushed in the dead man’s hand.
In the brutal summer heat Falcon starts to dismantle the obscure life of Rafael Vega only to receive threats from the Russian mafia who have begun operating in the city. His investigation into Vega’s neighbours uncovers a creative American couple with a destructive past and the misery of a famous actor whose only son is in prison for an appalling crime.
Within days two further suicides follow – one of them a senior policeman - and a forest fire rages through the hills above Seville obliterating all in its path. Falcon must now sweat out the truth, which will reveal that everything is connected and there is one more secret in the black heart of Vega’s life.
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First British Edition harpercollins (2003) |
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| Paperback - harpercollins (2004) |
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The Blind Man of Seville
It’s Semana Santa in Seville, the Easter week of passion and processions. A leading restaurateur is found bound, gagged and dead in front of his TV. The self-inflicted wounds tell of the man’s struggle to avoid the unendurable images he’s been forced to watch. When confronted by this horrific scene the normally dispassionate homicide detective Javier Falcon is inexplicably afraid. What could be so terrible?
The investigation into the victim’s turbulent life sends Falcon trawling through his own past and the ferociously candid journals of his late father, a world-famous artist. Painful revelations churn up Falcon’s unreliable memory and more killings push him to the edge of terrifying truth. And he realizes that this is not just a hunt for the all-seeing killer who knows his victims’ secret lives but also the search for Falcon’s missing heart.
From the Gold Dagger award-winning author of A Small Death in Lisbon, a novel that combines the tension of a psychological thriller with the emotional intensity of a literary tour de force.
'Gripping and exhilarating… a potent blend of beauty and terror' Harlen Coben
‘Robert Wilson’s fiction grows darker, deeper, more adamantly original. His seventh novel - nominally a thriller - turns the format inside out, extending its reach, tuning up the language, reinventing its anatomy. It is crime writing at its very best, but it is also something more. It observes no limits, it begs no pardon. It excites, it surprises and it satisfies. High praise but Wilson really is this good’ Philip Oakes, Literary Review
‘A big, highly entertaining and thought-provoking book, dealing as it does with themes of obsession, dysfunctional families, paranoia, the thirst for vengeance and insanity. The exotic setting, the true-to-life characters, the psychological perceptions and the interpolated journals of the father impart depth and breadth to a narrative that is as multi-faceted as Restoration drama’ Vincent Banville, Irish Times
‘The Blind Man of Seville is an ingenious and compelling thriller. It covers some unusual ground: the nature of artistic genius, for example, and the price of happiness. But while the investigation is convincing enough, it is Falcon Sr’s diaries that are the real gem. They are full of drama and confession - like Alan Clark’s, but with paintbrushes, firearms and catamites’ Toby Clements, Daily Telegraph
‘Finely written picture of Seville and a moody Jefe of police, Javier Falcon: a character evoked with some brilliant passages. The story of his family is intimately bound up with events. Interwoven with the modern narrative are fascinating digressions into the Spanish past. This is a work that ambitiously seeks to investigate Spanish history through its characters’ Jane Jakeman, Independent
‘As an evocation of the emotional labyrinth of postwar Tangiers and as a tale of artistic drift, it’s rather brilliant - a detective story Paul Bowles never wrote’ Chris Petit, Guardian
‘A fascinating, harrowing and moving account of a man facing the most heartbreaking truths about his life. A consummate writer who uses a broad canvas to explore many mysteries and delivers a magnificent and riveting story’ Cath Staincliffe, Manchester Evening News
‘Admirably paced and enthrallingly elaborate’ John DugdALE, Sunday Times
‘It is a book that exists on multiple levels, kicking off as an off-key detective story and ending up as (among other things) a tense psychological thriller and a literary investigation into perception and family loyalties. A wonderful, if dark and disturbing, literary detective novel’ Martin Radcliffe, Time Out
‘The momentum never flags as the clues mount up and Falcon begins to realize where they are leading. It’s an intriguing story and Mr Wilson handles its complexities superbly’ Susanna Yager, Sunday Telegraph
‘This is powerful evocative stuff’ Peter Guttridge, Observer
‘A splendid assembly of complexities and relationships that tangle generations in murder and scandal ... Wilson has a talent for digging beneath the skin to explore psychological and emotional nuances’ New York Daily News
‘Cruel, mesmerizing, and wonderfully intelligent’ Kirkus Reviews
| Paperback - harpercollins (2002) |
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First British Edition harpercollins (2001) |
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The Company Of Strangers
A consummate and passionate thriller by the Gold Dagger Award-winning author of A Small Death in Lisbon:
Lisbon 1944. In the torrid summer heat, as the streets of the capital seethe with spies and informers, the endgame of the Intelligence war is being silently fought.
Andrea Aspinall, mathematician and spy, enters this sophisticated world through a wealthy household in Estoril. Karl Voss, military attaché to the German Legation, arrives on a mission to rescue Germany from annihilation. In the lethal tranquility of this corrupted paradise they meet and attempt to find love in a world where no?one can be believed.
After a night of extreme violence, Andrea is left with a lifelong addiction to the clandestine world that leads her from the brutal Portuguese fascist regime to the paranoia of Cold War Germany, where she is forced to make the final and the hardest choice.
‘Wilson’s narrative is calm, chilly and engrossing. He writes with energy, appetite and a kind of unflinching compassion that allows him to scan horrors without excusing them. It is a rare talent and it gives his book purpose, muscle and stature’ Philip Oakes, Literary Review
‘Displaying once again Wilson’s gifts for atmospheric depiction of place, this ambitious experiment is streets ahead of most other thrillers’ John Dugdale, Sunday Times
‘A big, meaty novel of love and deceit, a thriller which spans Europe from the final flickers of the Second World War to the collapse of the Berlin Wall ... Wilson writes telling descriptions and precisely achieved set pieces. And his sense of place is terrific . . . with this novel Robert Wilson vaults to the front rank of thriller writers’ Peter Guttridge, Observer Review
‘The plot twists and turns, inexorably drawing you on to what is a realistic, sadly believable, conclusion. Wilson’s writing is admirable throughout, sure-footed in the dialogue; and in description, clean, clear and at times quite beautiful’ Susie Maguire, Scotland On Sunday
‘Wilson employs a slightly out-of-focus prose style that eminently suits his tale of intrigue and double-dealing. There is no doubt that he is a promising writer, his novel operating on many levels, to divert and to tease the intellect of his surely in the ascendant’ Vincent Banville, Irish Times
‘The Company of Strangers is an even more ambitious novel than A Small Death in Lisbon - a complex interplay of brutality, love and treachery . . . Combining historical novel, thriller and love story, Robert Wilson has created an intelligent, wide-ranging drama that satisfies on each of those levels’ Natasha Cooper, TLS
‘Wilson writes beautifully and is a meticulous observer of his characters. The book is absorbing’
Susanna Yager, Sunday Telegraph
‘An entertaining and gripping novel. Wilson has constructed an agreeably complicated story and tells it very well ... immensely enjoyable’ Allan Massie, The Scotsman
‘Robert Wilson takes a young romantic heroine who would not be out of place in a Daphne du Maurier novel and drops her into the intrigue of a neutral country in wartime . . . His tale is a plotter’s delight: spanning several decades and cleverly reworking past narratives in the light of new evidence he creates an intriguing moral maze for his heroine to negotiate - and a puzzle of metaphors to match (he’s a better stylist than du Maurier). Recommended’ Chris Petit, Guardian
‘The Company of Strangers spans the years from World War Two to glasnost and the collapse of the Berlin Wall, yet for all the inevitable social commentary the novel remains at heart a conventional socio-political thriller with strong echoes of le Carré, Ambler, Deighton and others . . . an evocative and compelling thriller’ Publishers Weekly
'Robert Wilson follows in the footsteps of such writers as John le Carré and Phillip Kerr. A highly satisfying book, part thriller, part psychological mystery and part novel of ideas. And it is superbly well written' Irish Times
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First British Edition harpercollins (1999) |
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| Paperback - harpercollins (2000) |
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A Small Death in Lisbon
See Review by
Val McDermid
- Gold Dagger winner & creator of Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan & Tony Hill
See Review by
Mat Coward
Winner of the CWA Gold Dagger Award for Fiction
A Portuguese bank is founded on the back of Nazi wartime deals.
Over half a century later a young girl is murdered in Lisbon.
1941. Klaus Felsen, forced out of his Berlin factory into the SS, arrives in a luminous Lisbon and the strangest party in history where Nazis and Allies, refugees and entrepreneurs dance to the strains of opportunism and despair. Felsen's war takes him to the bleak mountains of the north where a devious and brutal battle is being fought for an element vital to Hitler's blitzkrieg. There he meets the man who makes the first turn of the wheel of greed and revenge which rolls through to the century's end.
Late 1990s, Lisbon. Inspector Ze Coelho, an outsider in the insider world of the Policia Judiciaria is investigating the murder of a young girl with a disturbing sexual past. As ZC digs deeper he overturns the dark soil of history and unearths old bones. The 1974 revolution, still raw in the memory, has left injustices of the old fascist regime unresolved.
But there's an older, greater injustice, for which this small death in Lisbon is horrific compensation, and in Ze's final push for the truth, he must face the most chilling opposition.
'A class act' Sunday Times
'Robert Wilson follows in the footsteps of such writers as John le Carré and Phillip Kerr… a highly satisfying book, part thriller, part psychological mystery and part novel of ideas. And it is superbly well written’ Irish Times
‘Compulsively readable, with the cop’s quest burning its way through a narrative rich in history and intrigue, love and death’ Literary Review
‘Complex and fascinating’ The Times
'A gripping and absorbing drama - Robert Wilson is a masterful craftsman.'
Val McDermid, Manchester Evening News
| Paperback - harpercollins (1999) |
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A Darkening Stain
Bruce Medway does not see the disappearance of schoolgirls off the streets of Benin as any of his business. That is the domain of the police. Bruce has the more pressing matter of a visit from two sweet-natured mafiosi, employees of the Lagos-based Roberto Franconelli, who want him to locate a French businessman who is definitely in for more than a wristslapping.
But then an eighth and very important schoolgirl goes missing and Bruce finds himself descending into a dark world of police corruption, sexual depravity, illegally mined gold, mafia revenge, and the privileged but psychotic existence of Nigerian heiress, Madame Sokode. To save himself he must conceive a scam which, when executed, will result in death and destruction. But then innocence has always been the burden of dark experience.
'For once a novelist influenced by Raymond Chandler is not shown up by the comparison, matching his mentor's descriptive flourishes and screwball dialogue.'
Sunday Times
'Unmissable… unflinchingly imagined and executed. First in a field of one' Philip Oakes, Literary Review
'Potent, fiercely imagined and not a little frightening.' Literary Review
About The Author
Robert Wilson was born in 1957. A graduate of Oxford University, he has worked in shipping, advertising and trading in. He has travelled in Asia and Africa and has lived in Greece and West Africa and he draws on this experience for his Bruce Medway novels. He is married and writes from an isolated farmhouse in Portugal.
Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.
The Silent and the Damned
(harpercollins,
2004)
Sep 04
(Javier Falcon)
The Blind Man of Seville
(harpercollins,
2003)
harpercollins Pbk Feb 04
The Company Of Strangers
(harpercollins,
2001)
harpercollins Pbk Feb 02
A Small Death in Lisbon
(harpercollins,
1999)
harpercollins Pbk May 00
A Darkening Stain
(harpercollins,
1998)
harpercollins Pbk Feb 99
Blood is Dirt
(harpercollins,
1997)
harpercollins Pbk Feb 99
Instruments of Darkness
(
1996)
harpercollins Pbk Oct 99
The Big Killing
(harpercollins,
1996)
harpercollins Pbk 1997
The Silent and the Damned
by Robert Wilson
