Winter Pollen

Review: Tom Mooney

REVIEWS OF this Gothic novel have indicated that it is a difficult book to recommend, but if you are acquainted with Poe’s Murders on the Rue Morgue you shouldn’t be, in any way, affected by the violence contained within.

Marc Pastor is incapable of writing a dull line.  Sure, he gets down and dirty with his cast of characters, but what do you expect from brothel-visiting cops, grave robbers and the worst female serial killer Spain has ever known?

Inspired by the real-life events surrounding Enriqueta Marti, who terrorised Barcelona at the turn of the century by kidnapping young children for sexual exploitation and killing them not for kicks but for herbal remedies, Barcelona Shadows is also a brilliant evocation of a city teeming with all the worst excesses you would expect from a Dickensian slum in Whitechapel, with scenes as if framed by David Lean and directed by Quentin Tarantino.

In Enriqueta, the author has created a child’s worst nightmare since Robert Delpmann’s Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. She could look into the face of the devil, and laugh.

However, the most absorbing and three-dimensional character in the 250-plus page novel, translated from Spanish, is the deeply flawed but lovable Inspector Moises Corvo who, in no particular order, likes prostitutes, alcohol and a good brawl.

Unlike the society which spawned him, he is not indifferent to the fate of the missing kids and, borrowing heavily from Poe and Bram Stoker, Pastor finesses a story with the dregs of the earth but which is never less than riveting.

Not in a month of Sundays could I have foretold the ending, which happens upon you quicker than an avalanche, leaving you bereft of having to spend the rest of the day without the magic of Pastor’s writing and cornucopia of his images.  If there is a better novel to begin 2014 than Barcelona Shadows, I will retire gracefully into the sunset.