The Silent and the Damned [Hardcover]

Praise for The Blind Man of Seville:

‘Gripping and exhilarating… A potent blend of beauty and terror’ Harlan Coben

'Robert Wilson's fiction grows darker, deeper, more adamantly original. 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

'The Blind Man of Seville is an ingenious and compelling thriller. Falcón Sr's diaries are full of drama and confession – like Alan Clark's, but with paintbrushes, firearms and catamites' Toby Clements, Daily Telegraph

'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

'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 new psychological thriller featuring Javier Falcon, the tortured detective from The Blind Man of Seville

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 Falcón has his doubts when he finds an enigmatic note crushed in the dead man's hand.

In the brutal summer heat Falcón 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. Falcón 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.

Robert Wilson was born in 1957. A graduate of Oxford University, he has worked in shipping and advertising in London and trading in West Africa. He is married and divides his time between England, Spain and Portugal.