‘He was used to the filthy streets,
the overflowing waste-bins, the skips piled high and the pavements
where you had to dodge excrement of very varied origins.' That
is how the book's two authors define Santiago Escalona, a police
inspector who works at the station in Raval, one of the most down-at-heel
neighbourhoods in the city of Barcelona.
The plot, which is recounted by an
omniscient narrator – like classic
crime novels – and is structured the way this kind of story requires,
introduces the figure of a character who has to deal with two apparently
unconnected cases.
The first turns up in the Poble Sec
area, where a woman has fallen from her flat on to the inner courtyard.
Escalona has to solve this killing, where the neighbours do not
seem to like the victim over-much. As the ‘processes' move forward – as the hero calls them throughout
the novel – the reader sees a denouement that is very typical of
the genre. At the same time Escalona is investigating the disappearance
of an item of Mesopotamian jewellery from a wealthy mansion in Barcelona's
upper neighbourhood. The case is complicated by the death of the
owner, Señor Canals, which involves the hero plunging into
the world of prostitutes, drug addicts and high-class call girls.
All this is set in an intense heat
that emphasizes even more the construction of a stifling atmosphere.
As the action develops, the hero moves through the neighbourhoods
of Barcelona, pointing up the social inequalities. In this way
a biting social critique of the system is laid down, which is now
quite characteristic of this genre. With this novel – the second by the co-authors Pablo Bonell Goytisolo
and Empar Fernández, after Cienfuegos, 17 de agosto – we
have an excellent four-handed narrative. We look forward to reading
soon of this distinctive character's fresh adventures, since the
novel seems destined to become a series because of the question-marks
remaining unresolved in the hero's characterization. His successful
delineation reminds us of such famous detectives as Enric Vidal or
Lluís Arquer de Jaume Funder who passed through the slum areas
of the city or Inspector Méndez de Francisco González
Ledesma patrolling Barcelona's notorious streets. So we'll be looking
out very soon for the inspector's new adventures.
