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Realistic and truthful

Mala sangre*
Pablo Bonell Goytisolo
& Empar Fernández

Tropismos, 2007, 250 pages

Javier Sánchez Zapatero
Translation:

 

A year after the appearance on the market of the outstanding Las cosas de la muerte (Lethal matters), the Barcelona writing duo Pablo Bonell Goytisolo and Empar Fernández is once again in the news with the publication of Mala sangre. The second instalment of the series featuring Inspector Escalona retains the special characteristics that gave lustre to its predecessor, since it is also a novel of atmosphere and human character, realistic and truthful.

The sudden death of a man who earns his livelihood as a ‘live statue' in the street, only a few hours after the murder of a prostitute in the Barcelona neighbourhood of El Raval, provides the starting point for the book's plot. Certain that the two events are connected Escalona sets out on an investigation that will bring him into contact with worlds as seemingly different as the porn industry and Barcelona 's exclusive Equestrian Circle . The journey through the city that the inspector has to take allows the two authors to paint a detailed social fresco of the present-day Catalan city and to join the long list of writers who - from the period of Manuel de Pedrolo and Rafael Tasis up to our contemporaries such as Andreu Martín or Francisco González Ledesma, not forgetting the indispensable and emblematic Jaume Fuster and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán – have made Barcelona the most criminal Spanish city of all. What is particularly interesting in this study of urban life is the description of El Raval, the legendary quarter with its narrow alleys traditionally associated with the dregs of society and nowadays caught up in a permanently changing situation which has meant that it has become both an interracial symbol and the site of one of Barcelona's most innovative cultural projects.

Far from being anecdotal the choice of El Raval's urban landscape appears to help shape Mala sangre's main character. Escalona represents a certain model of man who is as incapable of coping with modern life's rapid changes as he is entrenched in his way of seeing and dealing with the world. The transformation of the streets on which he has worked all his life only demonstrates all the more emphatically the problems of adaptation faced by someone who, far from worrying about the transfer of policing responsibilities to the independent security forces or about the technological innovations that seem to please his colleagues so much, or about the latest news on Barça Barcelona Football Club), appears to live obsessed by loyalty to his role as a public servant. Without falling into the trope of the solitary disenchanted detective, Santiago Escalona shows himself to be a character who is close to us, a literary figure it is not hard to identify with.

Around the hero there appears once more the full range of secondary characters introduced in Las cosas de la muerte, thereby helping to make the day-to-day pace of Escalona's life more believable and familiar. Among them is the figure of Teresa, the officer with whom the inspector has an ongoing romantic relationship, and she grows in importance as a character compared with the first novel in the series. When she goes away from Barcelona because of family problems, her absence from the context in which the plot unfolds only strengthens her presence in Escalona's life and consolidates it as one of the anchors to which he clings when faced with a changing world he no longer seems to understand.

The narrative, which is a fluent read, confirms all the promising signs noted in the first offering from what can already be defined as the ‘Escalona saga'. What was simply presented in Las cosas de la muerte, given the special character of any volume intended as introductory, now appears in Mala sangre to be firmly established. Exceptional as a social depiction and human portrait, and written in an aseptic style that betrays a huge job of construction and an obvious dose of literary professionalism, the novel succeeds in combining the most classic features of the crime genre with an aesthetic and ethical intention that makes it more than merely entertaining detective fiction.

* Bad blood