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"Barcelona in 1912 is a city still recovering from the dramatic incidents of the so-called 'Tragic Week' when Catalonian conscripts bound for the unpopular war in Spanish Morocco had rebelled at the city's dockside against the royalist forces. In the fighting, many were killed, and afterwards, even more put in prison. Including an Englishman, who was later found dead in his cell." "The dead man had been a prominent businessman in Gibraltar, so what had he been doing in Barcelona? What part did he play in the illicit three-way trade between Gibraltar, Spanish Morocco and Barcelona? And just how did he really meet his end - murdered, in a prison cell?" The case, in Gibraltar's view, cries out for investigation - and by someone independent of the Spanish authorities. So Scotland Yard are summoned to send out one of their men - but who? Seymour ticks all the right boxes - he has experience of the tangled diplomatic world of that part of the Mediterranean. He speaks foreign languages. And possibly most importantly of all - he grew up near the docks of London's East End so with any luck, knows how to swim if pushed in the water.
Pearce's solid fifth pre-WWI historical to feature Sandor Seymour of Special Branch (after 2007's A Dead Man in Tangier) takes the Scotland Yard detective to Barcelona, Spain, to crack a two-year-old cold case-the death, while in a Spanish prison, of an English businessman, Sam Lockhart. Lockhart was arrested during the bloody riots that erupted in Barcelona in 1910 after reserve troops refused orders to serve in Spanish Morocco. Seymour's assignment enables him to reunite with Chantale de Lissac, his half-Arab, half-French romantic interest, who uses her people skills to help him learn more about the hidden personal and political passions that may have led to Lockhart's murder. As usual, Pearce is more concerned with-and more successful at-bringing his chosen milieu to life than stumping the reader with a puzzle. Fans of the author's Gareth Owen series (The Mark of the Pasha, etc.) will note similarities between Chantale and Owen's independent-minded Egyptian girlfriend-turned-wife. (Dec.)
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Fred Plaskin
reviewed A Dead Man in Barcelona on August 11, 2009
A Dead Man in Barcelona
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.
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