The Blind Man of Seville (65 page)

‘Compulsively readable, with the cop’s quest burning its way through a narrative rich in history and intrigue, love and death’

Literary Review

ISBN 13: 978 0 00 651202 8

The Big Killing
Robert Wilson

Bruce Medway, go-between and fixer for traders in West Africa, smells trouble when a porn merchant asks him to deliver a video at a secret location. Things look up, though, when he’s hired to act as minder to Ron Collins, a spoilt playboy looking for diamonds. Medway thinks this could be the answer to his cashflow crisis, but when the video delivery leads to a shootout and the discovery of a mutilated body, the prospect of retreating to his bolthole in Benin becomes increasingly attractive — especially as the manner of the victim’s death is too similar to a current notorious political murder for comfort.

His obligations, though, keep him fixed in the Ivory Coast and he is soon caught up in a terrifying cycle of violence. But does it stem from the political upheavals in nearby Liberia, or from the cutthroat business of diamonds? Unless Medway can get to the bottom of the mystery, he knows that for the savage killer out there in the African night, he is the next target …

‘A narrative distilled from pure protein: potent, fiercely imagined and not a little frightening’

Literary Review

ISBN 13: 978 0 00 647986 4

Instruments of Darkness
Robert Wilson

Benin, West Africa. Englishman Bruce Medway operates as a ‘fixer’ for traders on that part of the coast they used to call the White Man’s Grave. It’s a tough existence, but Medway can handle it … until he comes across the formidable Madame Severnou. Warned off further involvement by his client, Jack Obuasi, his energies are redirected into the search for missing expat, Steven Kershaw.

Kershaw, though, is a man of mystery: trader, artist, womanizer … and sado-masochist. Against background rumblings of political disturbance and endemic official corruption, Medway pursues his elusive quarry with a doggedness even he cannot explain. But as he soon learns, nothing in Africa is what it seems, and those who seek the truth find out more than they wish to know …

‘A witty, fast-moving and picaresque tale’

NELSON DEMILLE

ISBN 13: 978 0 00 647985 7

A Darkening Stain
Robert Wilson

Bruce Medway, fixer for the great unfixed, does not see the disappearance of schoolgirls off the streets of Cotonou, Benin, as any of his business. That is the domain of his ex-partner, police detective Bagado, and his corrupt boss. Bruce has the more pressing matter of a visit from two sweet-natured mafiosi who want him to find Jean-Luc Marnier, a French businessman in for something nastier than a wrist-slapping.

Then an important schoolgirl goes missing and Bruce gets involved, descending into a deeper darkness of police corruption, mafia revenge, sexual depravity and illegally mined gold. To save himself he conceives a scam, one that will excite the natural greed that prevails along this coast and, when executed out on the black waters of the huge lagoon system, inevitably result in death. But then innocence has always been the burden of dark experience.

‘Unmissable … Unflinchingly imagined and executed. No hint of competition’

Literary Review

ISBN-13: 978 0 00 713042 9

Blood is Dirt
Robert Wilson

Bruce Medway, fixer and debt collector in Benin, West Africa, has heard a few stories in his time. The one that Napier Briggs tells him is patchy but it doesn’t exclude the vital fact that two million dollars have gone missing. Bruce is used to imperfect information from clients embarrassed at their own stupidity. But this time it leads to a gruesome death.

It would all have ended there but for Napier’s daughter, the sexy, sassy and sussed Selina Aguia, a commodities broker. She launches Bruce into the savage world that her apparently innocuous father had chosen to inhabit — a world of oil and toxic waste scams, of mafia money laundering, of death and violence fuelled by drink, drugs and sex. Worse for Bruce, Selina wants revenge, and with the scam she invents it looks as though she’ll get it. But this is a world where blood is dirt — nobody really cares. Not even if they love you.

‘A vivid and steamy stumble on the wild side’

VAL MCDERMID

ISBN 13: 978 0 00 713041 2

The Company of Strangers
Robert Wilson

Lisbon 1944. In the torrid summer heat, as the streets of the capital seethe with spies and informers, the endgame of the Intelligence war is being silently fought.

Andrea Aspinall, mathematician and spy, enters this sophisticated world through a wealthy household in Estoril. Karl Voss, military attaché to the German Legation, has arrived embittered by his implication in the murder of a Reichsminister and traumatized by Stalingrad, on a mission to rescue Germany from annihilation. In the lethal tranquillity of this corrupted paradise they meet and attempt to find love in a world where no-one can be believed.

After a night of extreme violence, Andrea is left with a life-long addiction to the clandestine world that leads her from the brutal Portuguese fascist régime to the paranoia of Cold War Germany, where she is forced to make the final and the hardest choice.

‘Displaying once again Wilson’s gifts for atmospheric depiction of place, this ambitious experiment is streets ahead of most other thrillers’

JOHN DUGDALE,
Sunday Times

‘A big, meaty novel of love and deceit … with this novel Wilson vaults to the front-rank of thriller writers’

PETER GUTTRIDGE,
Observer

ISBN 13: 978 0 00 651203 5

The Blind Man of Seville
Robert Wilson

The man is bound, gagged and dead in front of his television. The terrible self-inflicted wounds tell of his violent struggle to avoid some unseen horror. On the screen? In his head? What could make a man do that to himself?

It’s Easter week in Seville, a time of passion and processions. But detective Javier Falcón is not celebrating. Appalled by the victim’s staring eyes he is inexorably drawn into this disturbing, mystifying case. And when the investigation into the dead man’s life sends Javier trawling though his own past and into the shocking journals of his late father, a famous artist, his unreliable memory begins to churn. Then there are more killings and Falcón finds himself pushed to the edge of a terrifying truth …

‘Gripping and exhilarating … A potent blend of beauty and terror’

HARLAN COBEN

‘An ingenious and compelling thriller’

Daily Telegraph

ISBN 13: 978 0 00 711781 9

The Silent and the Damned
Robert Wilson

At seven years old, Mario Vega faces a terrible tragedy — his parents are dead in an apparent suicide pact.

But Inspector Javier Falcón has his doubts. In the brutal heat of a Seville summer, he dissects the disturbing life of the boy’s father, Rafael Vega. His investigation draws threats from the Russian mafia whose corruption reaches deep into the city. He questions a creative American couple with a destructive past and uncovers the misery of a famous actor whose only son is in prison for an appalling crime.

More suicides follow and one of them is a senior policeman. As a forest fire rages through the hills above the city Falcón must sweat out the truth that connects it all — and find the final secret in the dark heart of Vega’s life.

‘Robert Wilson’s plotting is intricate, his detective endearingly human, Seville a captivating venue. This is crime fiction of high order’

MARCEL BERLINS,
The Times

‘First rate … a taut, gripping narrative and a sensitive study of the tormented detective’

Sunday Telegraph

ISBN 13: 978 0 00 711785 7

AUTHOR’S NOTE

About halfway through writing
The Blind Man of Seville
I realized that the journals I wanted to integrate into the story did not exist. So in the summer of 2001 I took three months to write the diaries of the periods in Francisco Falcón’s life that I wanted to use. I didn’t know how I was going to fit them into the narrative, but it helped me to develop the fully rounded character. By the time I had finished the book I was left with diary excerpts from the latter part of Francisco Falcón’s life in Tangier which, although interesting from the characterization point of view, were not integral to the story. You can read them on www.HarcourtBooks.com

Also by Robert Wilson

The Company of Strangers
A Small Death in Lisbon

JAVIER   FALCON   NOVELS

The Silent and the Damned
The Hidden Assassins

BRUCE   MEDWAY   NOVELS

A Darkening Stain
Blood is Dirt
The Big Killing
Instruments of Darkness

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Before I could start writing this book I had to find out how the police and the judiciary worked and I interviewed a number of people who were all friendly and helpful. I would like to thank Magistrado Juez Decano de Sevilla Andres Palacios, los fiscales de Sevilla and the Inspector Jefe del Grupo de Homocidios de Sevilla Simon Bernard Espinosa, who was also very informative about his approach to murder cases. The characters who appear in this book with these titles are in no way representative of the real people nor are the professional relationships between them at all typical.

I would also like to thank Dr Fernando Ortiz Blasco who not only helped me with my hip but was also very informative about bullbreeding and bullfighting.

On the Tangier end of things I was very fortunate to be introduced by Frances Beveridge to Patrick Thursfield, who in turn put me in touch with Mercedes Guitta who lived in Tangier during and after World War 2. I thank them all for their help.

My friend Bindy North was good enough to run her professional eye over the psychological dialogues and give me her opinion, for which I am very grateful.

The main reason this book was written was because of my two friends who live in Seville, Mick Lawson and José Manuel Blanco Marcos. Over many years they have decanted, consciously and inadvertently, massive amounts of information about Spain, Andalucía and
Seville. They have also been incredibly supportive of me throughout my writing career, rebuilding me when I’ve turned up broken and celebrating with me when things have gone right. I have dedicated the book to them, which is a small way of saying that no man could wish for better friends.

Finally I want to thank my wife, Jane, who doesn’t see much more of me than a hunched back over a desk but, as always, has helped me with research, given me the benefit of her very sure editorial eye and despatched my frequent doubts to the abyss. I cannot conceive of writing a book without her, which must make her my muse.

About The Author

THE BLIND MAN OF SEVILLE

Robert Wilson was born in 1957. A graduate of Oxford University, he has worked in shipping and advertising in London and trading in West Africa. He is married and divides his time between England, Spain and Portugal.

He was awarded the CWA Gold Dagger for Fiction for his fifth novel,
A Small Death in Lisbon.

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Praise for The Blind Man of Seville

‘Robert Wilson’s fiction grows darker, deeper, more adamantly original. His seventh novel — nominally a thriller — turns the format inside out, extending its reach, tuning up the language, reinventing its anatomy. It is crime writing at its very best, but it is also something more. It observes no limits, it begs no pardon. It excites, it surprises and it satisfies. High praise but Wilson really is this good’

PHILIP OAKES,
Literary Review

‘A big, highly entertaining and thought-provoking book, dealing as it does with themes of obsession, dysfunctional families, paranoia, the thirst for vengeance and insanity. The exotic setting, the true-to-life characters, the psychological perceptions and the interpolated journals of the father impart depth and breadth to a narrative that is as multi-faceted as Restoration drama’

VINCENT BANVILLE,
Irish Times

‘The Blind Man of Seville
is an ingenious and compelling thriller. It covers some unusual ground: the nature of artistic genius, for example, and the price of happiness. But while the investigation is convincing enough, it is Falcón Sr’s diaries that are the real gem. They are full of drama and confession — like Alan Clark’s, but with paintbrushes, firearms and catamites’

TOBY CLEMENTS,
Daily Telegraph

‘Finely written picture of Seville and a moody
Jefé
of police, Javier Falcon: a character evoked with some brilliant passages. The story of his family is intimately bound up with events. Interwoven with the modern narrative are fascinating digressions into the Spanish past. This is a work that ambitiously seeks to investigate Spanish history through its characters’