- Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: Pluto Press (26 April 1984)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0861047710
- ISBN-13: 978-0861047710
- Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 4,954,036 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
Detective Pepe Carvalho is called in to investigate the murder of a prominent member of the Spanish Communist Party.
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Santos absent-mindedly shuffled the folders. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Santos absent-mindedly shuffled the folders. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This isn't the best of the Pepe Carvalho detective novels, but it is a ripping good detective yarn with a few extras chucked in. The extras are the intelligence of the writer and the ideas he slips into the narrative. How ludicrous the sex scene appears depends on your own personal preferences, it amused me, but the book can loose sight of its plot at times which is part of the fun. So all in all a good read, but try one of other Carvalho tales first. Also try Danial Pennac.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The book opens with the shooting of the head of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Madrid, in a locked room in the dark. Pepe Carvalho (a food-loving ex-communist turned private investigator) is hired by the Party to find the murderer. He is also forced to work with the official investigation, led by the communist-hating Fonseca, with whom Pepe has a torrid history.
Promising stuff indeed: settings in Barcelona and Madrid, political intrigue, murder and gastronomy. Sadly, though, the author spoils all this with plenty of tedious and peripheral dialogue on communist history and thought, some terrible writing (the "love" scene in particular), cardboard characters surrounding Pepe and increasingly facile happenings to the plot.
The saving graces of the book are the evocation of Barcelona and the very good writing on food - but even then, Robert Elms and Jonathan Meades do it better.
Format:Paperback
I thought I would give the book a go given some of the favourable reviews on its cover. The backdrop is important so that some appreciation of Spanish history, a European style of writing, and an introduction to the delicacies of tripe, are a necessity before embarking on this political murder mystery.
The Communist back-slidden main character occupies most of the prose, with little character development given to anyone else. Much of the book is interspersed with hardcore Communist political theory and lamentations on the Spanish suppression thereof, by Franco. At first, these provide a level of enlightenment for those who do not recognise the subtle differences between a Trotskyist and a devout Leninst, but after a while rather distract from the pace of the book and nearing the end are positively grating as the climax meanders on.
It is an insight into the way in which European fiction translated into English hangs together, as opposed to fiction written in English, and I suspect that a few of the subtleties of the original Spanish are lost in translation.
I was slightly amused by the characters' references to Le Carre - a style which the author apes but cannot deliver.
Worth a look but you can skip some of the dialectical materialism, and give me permanent revolution any day!
The Communist back-slidden main character occupies most of the prose, with little character development given to anyone else. Much of the book is interspersed with hardcore Communist political theory and lamentations on the Spanish suppression thereof, by Franco. At first, these provide a level of enlightenment for those who do not recognise the subtle differences between a Trotskyist and a devout Leninst, but after a while rather distract from the pace of the book and nearing the end are positively grating as the climax meanders on.
It is an insight into the way in which European fiction translated into English hangs together, as opposed to fiction written in English, and I suspect that a few of the subtleties of the original Spanish are lost in translation.
I was slightly amused by the characters' references to Le Carre - a style which the author apes but cannot deliver.
Worth a look but you can skip some of the dialectical materialism, and give me permanent revolution any day!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Intriguing, Invigorating Stuff
Do ignore the negative comments made on this page by a couple of correspondents who don't have the knowledge of politics and history required to really get stuck into this... Read more
Published on 17 Aug 2006 by Alice Cribbins
the revolution will not be catered
Originally published in Spanish in 1981
Translated by Patrick Camiller
Translated by Patrick Camiller
The fourth Pepe Carvalho mystery begins with a stab in the dark: as the members of the central... Read more
Published on 5 Mar 2006 by johnnybird
A Rambling Bore
I love reading detective and crime fiction from other countries, however I have to confess this particular book (the first of Montalban's I've read) left me rather disappointed. Read more
Published on 20 Sep 2002 by A. Ross
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