Tangled Web UK Review February 2003
Blind Man of Seville by
Robert Wilson
hbk out February 03
Published by HarperCollins
at £10
Robert Wilson's audacious and powerful new book takes on both a new
location, a vibrant Seville in Spain's Andalucia, and a new protagonist
in Chief Inspector Javier Falcón. And whilst the novel's over-riding
theme, the deceptiveness of appearances, is far from a new one in crime
fiction, here it is explored both in unusual depth and in many guises,
and brought to a conclusion that is both riveting and mind-blowing.
When Falcón first glimpses the mutilated body of Raúl Jiménez, his
eyelids cut away by his killer so that he cannot avoid the images
playing on his TV screen, it triggers a reaction in Falcón that is
something more than horror. The aftermath of that reaction will bring
him close to nervous breakdown. But Falcón is a good policeman and,
against a background of the intoxicating, beautifully rendered
atmosphere of Seville's Holy Week, Semana Santa, and the ensuing, more
secular April Fair (the Feria de Abril) with its attendant bullfights,
his investigation is soon exploring a number of promising leads. There
is, for instance, Consuelo, Jiménez's wronged wife, a son kidnapped many
years ago in Tangier, a traumatised daughter, municipal corruption at
the time of Seville's massive Expo '92, and even a hint of paedophilia.
Nothing is as it seems however, not least Falcón himself. About as far
from the broad strokes that make up a Morse or a Banks as it is possible
to get, Falcón is an intense and repressed individual, the son of an
illustrious Spanish painter. "You have no heart", Falcón's ex-wife once
taunted, a phrase that echoes throughout the book. And as the case
proceeds, Falcón is forced, in a plot cunningly developed alongside (and
interweaving with) his investigation, to confront, via his father's
journals, his father's legacy, both material and psychological – and
final liberation for himself.
The journals (Falcón's father Francisco calls them 'a small history of
pain' adding that 'it will become yours') tell a terrible and horrifying
story that starts with the brutal activities of the División Azul, a
section of the (nationalist) Army of Africa, in both the Spanish Civil
War and beyond to Hitler's war in Russia. Later the story moves to
post-war Tangier, amoral playground ('a microcosm of the future') of an
international 'set' that includes the Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton
and writers Paul Bowles and William Burroughs. The monstrous final
stages of the journals will bring Falcón face to face with the
long-sought killer.
The book is a marvel of construction, the pace at first steady, then
quickening as the journals are introduced, finally breathless as the
revelations come thick and fast. The prose is strong on physical
sensation, sights, smells and feelings; subsidiary themes and ideas (the
nature of genius, the artist as destroyer as well as creator are just
two) thicken the narrative. The cumulative effect is truly thrilling,
both in the conventional sense, and in a profound and often disturbing
way rarely encountered in crime fiction.
Don't miss this one. This is prime British crime fiction, meaty and thought-provoking,
the best since last year's The Company of Strangers, by no coincidence
also by Robert Wilson.
(
Bob Cornwell
)
New Books by Robert Wilson at Amazon.co.uk
Secondhand and Out of Print Books by Robert Wilson at Alibris.com
