The Blind Man of Seville (Hardcover)

The very title The Blind Man of Seville raises some of the most interesting questions in this original thriller, which breaks the mould of the police procedural far more than seems likely in its seemingly conventional early pages.

A series of men and women are killed by torture and their eye-lids or eyes taken from them in the process--but they die if anything of an excess of sight, of being forced to watch the unendurable. As Inspector Falcon does the legwork of the case, and gets more and more teasing messages about sight and light from the ingenious and vicious killer, we find ourselves wondering whether he himself is the blind man, if there is something he is refusing to see.

At the same time, he is clearing the studio of his dead painter father, and reading journals containing a horribly plausible version of the man he thought he knew--a bisexual gangster who fought for Fascism and the Nazis in Spain and Russia. And around him Seville is having its intense and bizarre Holy Week celebrations, with bullfights and with vast puppets of sacred figures looming around the streets.

This is a book of surreal intensity which plays by all the rules of the detective novel and yet gives the reader so much disturbingly more. --Roz Kaveney

Praise for A Small Death in Lisbon: 'Robert Wilson follows in the footsteps of such writers as John le Carre and Phillip Kerr... A highly satisfying book, part thiller, 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 though a narrative rich in history and intrigue, love and death' Literary Review 'Complex and fascinating' The Times

From this Gold Dagger award-winning author comes an absorbing and compelling psychological thriller that has its readers turning the pages ever more quickly as the unrelenting inevitability of the plot begins to dawn and take a hold. The action begins with the gruesome discovery by detective Javier Falcon of a grossly mutilated body and the investigation begins to take on its own momentum as two more equally horrific murders follow. The backdrop for the chilling series of discoveries is the exotic heat of Seville with its heady and erotic mix of religious festivals, bull fights, bars and restaurants and an accompanying whiff of corruption and scandal. As the police begin to get nearer their suspect, so the killer gradually begins to reveal himself. The clues he leaves and the messages he sends have an impact on Falcon beyond the purely professional as he himself becomes a part of the unfolding mystery. The discovery of his artist father's journals force him to confront the ghosts of his own past whilst providing answers to the questions that will help solve the horrendous crimes. This is a complex and finely crafted novel that pulls no punches in its graphic depictions of homicide and sexual abuse. Its aim and effect are not simply, however, to shock and terrify. The narrative is gripping (despite the liberal and somewhat distracting use of Spanish words throughout the text), alternating as it does between the sordid details of the police investigation and the increasingly monstrous revelations of the journal entries. At the same time, the author develops his characters with insight and assurance, from corrupt petty officials to sickening paedophiles, and creates in his brooding and lonely portrait of Falcon a central figure reminiscent of Rebus or Morse. (Kirkus UK)

The pleasures of Spain's happiest city can't stop a detective's slide into breakdown as he looks into a series of gruesome and increasingly personal murders. Javier Falc-n, son of the late artist Francisco Falc-n, after years in Madrid, now investigates murders in Seville. That city's seductive attractions are largely lost on Falc-n, who has been abandoned by Ines, the beautiful, brainy wife who told him on the way out that he has no heart. Not so. He's now suffering extraordinarily from the shock of his latest case, the death of restaurateur Raul Jimenez, a man in his 70s with, it turns out, close historic ties to Falc-n's father. Jimenez, who had been hogtied by his assassin for the removal of his eyelids, thrashed himself to death to avoid the sight of the video inserted by the murderer in his VCR. Falc-n begins to suffer all the symptoms of a classical nervous breakdown as he and his lieutenants sort through forensic evidence and the teasing clues sent to them directly by the murderer. Revelations of Jimenez's criminal past lead the investigators past his attractive second wife, past his possible involvement in the corruption of Seville's 1992 World Expo, back all the way to the beginning of his very successful WWII black-marketing, when Javier's father was his partner. And it's the father's story that fleshes out the strange facts. Javier has at last opened Francisco's studio and come upon the diaries his father kept from his teenaged years as a fascist warrior to his last days as Spain's second-most famous artist. News of his father's shady, ever more dissolute life; of the deaths of his mother and stepmother; and then fresh murders push Falc-n further and further down, until he catches a lifeline thrown by a blind but visionary psychologist. Almost overrich in powerful pictures of hard lives, overlit Africa, and long, dark Spanish nights. Cruel, mesmerizing, and wonderfully intelligent. (Kirkus Reviews)