What Book to Read?

Some time ago I reviewed The Hidden Assassins, by Robert Wilson, noting that it was the third of a quartet of crime stories featuring Chief Inspector – Inspector Jefe – Javier Falcón, of the Grupo de Homicidios of the Seville police. This is the first in the series, published in 2003.

Falcón has worked as a homicide detective in most of Spain’s large cities. He returned to Seville to be near his father Francisco Falcón, a famous painter, who has since died. He is considered cold and clinical in his approach to his work. So what is it that so profoundly affects him this time about the crime scene he is called to? A man has been murdered in a gruesome way, but he has seen worse. ‘Then what is this thing thundering away in my chest?’ he wonders. There are a number of threads in the dead man’s life that could have led to his murder – his relationship with his wife, his business interests, his sexual tastes – but Javier becomes convinced that the explanation lies in the man’s more distant past. He finds a photo of his father among the man’s belongings, and this sends him on an exploration of his own family history. For the first time since his father’s death, he goes into his studio, where he finds journals his father wrote over many years. It is soon clear from them that he knew the murdered man well. But the journals also shed a frightening light on his father’s life and character. How will this help solve the crime? And can Falcón stop himself sliding into a state of psychological disintegration long enough to work on it?

If you accept the premise that the original crime knocks Falcón off his balance and turns him back to his own family history, then the story works well. There are all the avenues of investigation of the murder for the police to work through, one of which turns out to involve internal police politics. Then there are more murders. Falcón’s relationships with his brother and sister and ex-wife also feed nicely into the story. And then of course there is what he learns from the journals. You might wonder where all this is leading, and naturally there are a number of dead ends. But be patient; Wilson knows where he’s going.

There is much more than a police investigation in the book. Javier’s father’s journal entries go back to the thirties, and though them we see a slice of Spanish history of the darkest kind, both in Europe and in Morocco, which is interesting in itself. I don’t know how accurate it is, but I found Francisco’s comment on International Zone of Morocco fascinating; he sees it as a place ‘where a new sort of society is being created’, a society where ‘there are no codes’, where its ‘untaxed, unruled business affairs … are played out in its society’s shunning of any form of morality.’ It seems a fitting setting for his father’s story. Javier hopes in the journals to discover why his father’s creativity seemed blocked in his later years, and also hopes to fill in gaps in his own memory. The idea of a mind refusing to remember hurtful experiences is probably not very sophisticated psychology, but it works well enough here, as does Javier’s overwhelming need to reassure himself that his parents loved him. I found the process of his unravelling to be quite convincing, even if what started it off is a bit arbitrary.

Wilson says he has a strong sense of place, and this is reflected in his depictions of both Seville and Tangiers. Even the festivals of Seville play a part; Falcón’s investigation takes place around Easter, and he is profoundly upset when he twice finds himself in the midst of Easter processions, though he doesn’t’ know why. I have to confess though that I skipped over the description of the bull fight; it was pretty obvious what was going to happen.

I think the major weakness in the story is the villain, who is too clever by half, and barely sketched in as a character. Maybe this is Wilson being very clever, and suggesting his characters carry their own destructive demons inside them; there is thus no need to need to write in detail about their nemesis. But I think it’s more of a case of needing to sustain the suspense.

You can read more about Robert Wilson and his work on his informative website. After the Seville quartet, he has moved on to a new character with plots set in London, and there are earlier series set in Portugal and West Africa. A TV series, Falcón (2012) has been made, based on the first two Falcón books, this one and The Silent and the Damned (2004). The series looks worth seeing – it was recently shown on SBS in Australia – though I did read that the characters all have English accents, undermining what should be a strong Spanish flavour.