Jussi Adler-Olsen, The Keeper of Lost Causes ***

The Keeper of Lost Causes is the first book in a series of Danish detective novels featuring Carl Mørck and "Department Q," which handles cold cases. You can tell it's the first book in a series by the number of peripheral characters who are introduced but don't really impact the story, such as Carl's ex-wife and his lodger.

The police investigation and the character development are well-executed. Our hero is cantankerous without becoming too eccentric. The author skirts but avoids the many pitfalls of detective novels, resisting the urge to make Carl a genius or the criminal a mastermind, not giving characters long speeches of exposition, and keeping separate investigations separate instead of revealing that they all tie together. The only trope Adler-Olsen does indulge in is describing all female characters in terms of how attractive they are.

...Until around page 300 (of 395) when the perpetrator is revealed and he explains his motives and methods in the manner of movie villains everywhere. And what a plot it is! He's not content to kill his victim but has to implement an implausibly elaborate scheme to punish her. It involves a pressure chamber, not because that makes any sense but because it provides a creative method of murder. The bad guy also declines to shoot our hero before demanding an explanation of how the detective found him. 

Colm Tóibín, Homage to Barcelona ** 1/2

One final souvenir from our trip to Spain, purchased in Barcelona at the Llibreria Anglesa. The Irish author Tóibín lived in Barcelona at the end of the Franco years, and Homage to Barcelona promised a portrait of the city emerging from dictatorship.

I was expecting the novelist Tóibín to provide insights into the unique spirit of Barcelona and the distinctive style of the artists who lived there (Gaudí, Picasso, Miró, Dalí). What distinguishes Barcelona from other cities? I hoped Tóibín would identify subtle attitudes that would elucidate aspects of our personal experience there.

Instead the book is largely a stick-to-the-facts summary of 20th-century Catalon history, devoid of a personalized perspective. The Modernisme style incorporates Gothic elements; art is inextricably tied to Catalan nationalism; Spaniards don't like to talk about the Civil War –– yeah, yeah, tell me something I don't know from Rick Steves.

I learned that Picasso painted his "blue period" works just off La Rambla, but this information doesn't enhance my appreciation of his work or the location. Tóibín mentions that Picasso and Federico Garcia Lorca were both from Andalusia rather than Catalonia, but he declines to explain the significance of the regional differences (even though Lorca gave a talk on the very subject!).

Felipe Romero, The Second Son of the Silk Merchant ***

One way in which I attempt to prolong the glow of an overseas vacation is to read their local literature. During our trip to Spain, I picked up The Second Son of the Silk Merchant, a novel that takes place in Granada just after the Catholic conquest. Much of the working class population is still Muslim, known as Moriscos. Church builders discover a collection of manuscripts purportedly from the early centuries A.D.  indicating that the local population was Arabic-speaking Christians (true story). The books enhance the status of Granada until they are exposed as forgeries and inspire the Inquisition to deport all Muslims from Spain.

The author takes great pains to describe life in Granada at the turn of the 17th century. Unfortunately, the narrator sounds like he's reciting lightly narrativized dialogue from a museum exhibit.

In this Venice my father lived from the age of nineteen until forty. There was where all the wealth of the world flowed, where everything from black pepper, cinnamon, ginger, blue and red French and Catalan wool, velvet and Damask brocade, lace from Bruges, muslin from Monsul, gauze from Gaza, Brazil wood, cedar from Lebanon, cloth from Flanders to emeralds from the New World, diamonds from Africa and pearls from the Asiatic seas were hoarded. ... All this wealth flowed from the seven maritime routes, seven maritime routes that served many enormous, robust merchant galleys...

The story proper doesn't start until page 75, and it's soon interrupted by an idyll in the Andalusian countryside. The narrator Alonso Lomellino is an extremely passive character who drifts through the religious life his father chose for him, eventually becoming a mystic.

So: a vivid but largely static picture of 17th-century Granada which squanders a fascinating real-life controversy and underplays the tragedy of the expulsion of the Muslims. 

Dosde (publisher), Various Spanish souvenir books ****

Shopping in tourist shops during our trip to Spain, I found that the best options for souvenir books always seemed to come from the publisher Dosde. They had the best pictures and the most appropriate level of detail in their explanations. I ended up buying and reading three: Tilework in the Alhambra, The Alhambra of Granada, and Modernisme. I also tried to buy The Royal Alcazar of Seville, but the English edition was out of stock. The books aren't perfect –– the callouts don't always match the illustration and they tend to just drift off near the end –– but they provide me with what I need as a tourist.

I sometimes wish I were the kind of person who wants scholarly books like Reading the Alhambra, but really I just want the pretty pictures.

Javier Marías, A Heart So White ***

For our long-delayed trip to Spain, I chose a novel by Spain's (internationally) most famous contemporary writer. I should have known that a Marías novel was not going to supply any kind of local color to the trip: his plots and digressions deal in universal themes.

A Heart So White is similar in many ways to Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me: a Shakespearean title, a loquacious unreliable narrator, deaths at the beginning and end, long tangents on thematically related but narratively separate subjects. 

I would characterize the book's style as being like a jazz tune. It starts with a pair of impressive episodes that set the melody. The narrator then starts telling other stories that elaborate on some of the themes in those early melodies, riffing on them until the connection seems tenuous. At the end, all the elements come back together to restate the melody more fully. The book also uses a strategy I associate with David Lynch films: when the resolution of a narrative mystery seems imminent, the narrator defers the satisfaction of that resolution by shifting to another thread in the story.

I didn't enjoy A Heart So White as much as I did Tomorrow in the Battle. The beginning and the end are both awesome, but I struggled to care through much of the middle.