A Dead Man in Barcelona Book

The premise of this book is promising: a British investigator is sent to Barcelona in 1912 to probe the death of a fellow-countryman who has been a go-between in procuring the Royal Navy precious oil reserves as it transforms its fleet from coal to oil power.
The city is seething. Two years before in "Tragic Week" the Spanish authorities violently crushed a Catalan uprising. The city is also a major stronghold for anarchists while Arab immigrants pursue their own lives in its shadows. The murdered Brit was caught up in all of these separate groups.
Despite the juicy set-up, I have to report the book is a major disappointment. There is no period detail in this book, no sense of being transported back to 1912. The city does not come to life, in fact the only location regularly evoked is the pedestrian street, Las Ramblas. We don't see how people dress or live; we don't smell the city which at the time was in the midst of a major economic boom that gave birth to its unique architecture (this is just the time when Gaudi was active).
The other location the author uses is Gibraltar but here there is even less detail -- no rock, no descriptions at all.
Worse, the characters, whether they be Spanish or Catalan or Arab, all come across as terribly proper Englishmen and women. The main character is in the midst of a passionate affair with an exotic woman from Tangiers. It has all the passion of a cucumber sandwich. They don't kiss, or hug, or speak to one another, or profess love or do anything at all.
The author has also a weird way of handling dialogue. He has characters recount page after page of conversations they had with other people verbatim. At other times, characters manage to overhear long passages of incriminating dialogue.
There is a solution to the murder but by the end one scarcely cares because nothing seems to be at stake.
I was expecting something rich and pungent. Instead I got weak tea.