The Blind Man of Seville (Hardcover)

by Robert Wilson (Author) "It had started the moment he'd walked into that room and had seen that face..." (more)
Key Phrases: marble flagstones, paedophile ring, lifting gear, Edificio del Presidente, Mudanzas Triana, Pepe Leal (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
After trying his hand at spy fiction in The Company of Strangers, Robert Wilson returns to his detective-thriller roots with The Blind Man of Seville, a grimly bewitching and character-driven yarn about people confronting their most hidden horrors.

"It was only right that there should be at least one murder in Holy Week," muses Inspector Jefe Javier Falcón as he's called out during Spain's Semana Santa festivities to probe the death of a prosperous Seville restaurateur, Raúl Jiménez. The deceased was found strapped to a chair with his eyelids removed, facing a television on which had been showing a video of him entertaining prostitutes. Jiménez's heart had failed as he struggled to escape. This murder is "more extraordinary than any I have seen in my career," Falcón tells the businessman's widow, as he embarks on an investigation that will lead to the slayings of a hooker and an art dealer, and force the homicide cop into a game of wits against a killer obsessed with the contradictions between illusion and reality. Meanwhile, Falcón is himself obsessed with the long-secreted journals kept by his late father, a famous painter, whose brutal acts during the Spanish Civil War and subsequent hedonism in North Africa shaped Javier's life... and will make him the killer's next target.

Wilson's plot turns rather creakily on the coincidence of Falcón discovering a photograph of his father among Jiménez's things. And lengthy excerpts from the elder Falcón's diaries, while they reveal links between the book's secondary players, and are interesting for their portrayal of wartime Europe and postwar Tangier, nonetheless hobble this story's pace and distract from the modern crimes at its center. Still, there's a poetic edge to this author's prose that makes even his most gruesome or tragic scenes worthy of rereading, and in Javier Falcón--a lonely outsider who shadows his ex-wife and has a perplexing aversion to milk--he creates a police protagonist as satisfyingly and humanly flawed as any since Zé Coelho, from Wilson's outstanding A Small Death in Lisbon. --J. Kingston Pierce

From Publishers Weekly
Proving that even the most talented authors can have an off day, Wilson (A Small Death in Lisbon, etc.) has come up with a long, dense, often brilliantly written but finally off-putting and depressing story, which starts with the grisly murder of a Seville restaurant tycoon. Parts of the novel work wonderfully: an interview between Javier Falc¢n, the chief of Seville's homicide squad, and the victim's young widow, crackles with wit and electricity as she gets more out of him than he does out of her. And Falc¢n (whose late father, a famous painter, had links to the dead tycoon going back to their days in the Foreign Legion in Tangiers during the Spanish Civil War) is often a fascinating figure-when he's not imploding with the weight of his discoveries about his father's past or the stress of his job and a recently failed marriage. Descriptions of a ranch where fighting bulls are bred and of a bullfight are worthy of Hemingway, as are scenes from life in Seville during Holy Week. But in the end, there's too much blood, too many old journals, too much torture and depravity to absorb and process into art and/or entertainment.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt; 1st edition (February 3, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151008353
• ISBN-13: 978-0151008353
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #708,424 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

• This is item 1 in The Javier Falcon Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great thriller. Great setting. Great characters., April 3, 2003

By	RachelWalker "RachelW" (England) - See all my reviews

This, the new novel by the award-winning author of A Small Death in Lisbon, appears to have much going for it. The first draw is its rather curious title, the second is its exotic setting, Seville, Spain. Plus, the plot itself sounds rather fascinating...

Thursday 12th of April, and a leading restaurateur is found slain in his home. Tied to a chair in front his TV, he has been forced to view horrifically unendurable images. The horrors of these scenes is evidenced by the self-inflicted wounds caused by Raul Jimenez's desperate struggle not to watch them. On top of that, his eyelids have been removed. The normally dispassionate detective Javier Falcon is shocked deeply, and becomes inexplicably frightened by this killer who seems to have know, intimately, every single detail of his victim's life. Never in his career has he confronted a scene so barbaric.

But, for Javier Falcon, the worst is yet to come. Because, in investigating the victim's complex past, he discovers that it is inextricably connected with that of his own father, world-famous artist Francisco Falcon. The case eventually becomes not just a hunt for a killer clearly prepared to strike again, but a voyage of discovery for Falcon as he, through Francisco's journals, learns much about his father's past and the dark secrets it hides...

This story, told through the dual narratives of fascinating diary extracts and standard third-person narration, is told expertly. Even though the first hundred pages or so grow slightly dull at times, and it takes a while to settle all the numerous characters in your mind, the pace soon picks up as we learn that the case has as much to do with the past as it does the present. The setting is described wonderfully, and the city of Seville is really brought to life, shimmering with vitality. I might even recommend this book for the setting alone.

The lead character, Javier Falcon, is unendingly fascinating and gloriously chilly. The reader cannot help but care and get a little worried as his mental health gently seems to decline as he desperately tries to hold everything together in the face of affecting revelations concerning his present and past. When those revelations finally fully come to light near the finish, it is with a great sense of shock on the reader's part. Indeed, the final hundred pages are absolutely wonderful, when everything falls into place and the reader realises the scale of what is being revealed.

This book is a great thriller for the most part, and I'd recommend it quite highly. The writing quality is very good, but the prose itself doesn't exactly sing. Instead, it has a rather detached coolness that fits surprisingly well. Part tense thriller, part examination of the effects of the past on the present, and part novel of ideas and of the natural of true art, I'd give this one a big thumbs up on almost all fronts!

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars (4.5) The nature of pure evil, January 5, 2005

By	Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Blind Man of Seville (Paperback)

It is Semana Santa in Seville and everything is in a state of excitement, anticipating a full week of Easter processions, crowds of celebrants lining the streets in preparation. In the middle of the cheerful chaos, Inspector Jefe Falcon is chosen to investigate a gruesome murder case with implications of dark secrets and a long-buried history of brutality.

Raul Jimenez surrounded himself with celebrity and the attendant bourgeoisie who made his life run smoothly. With a penchant for depravity, there was a discrepancy between his public and private lives, leading to speculation about the grotesque manner of the killing. As the case unfolds, something equally dark surfaces in Falcon's subconscious, a reawakening of memories tied to his own father, a famous artist of brutal intensity, Francisco Falcon. Living alone in his father's huge mansion, memory lurks in every corner; separated from his wife, Falcon is left confused and vulnerable.

The Inspector seizes upon the idea that the murder is rooted somewhere in Jimenez' past in Tangier in the 1930's and '40's. Falcon, as is his way, leaves no detail to chance, not Raul's younger wife, his son from a prior marriage, nor previous nefarious business associates. Clearly a man of uninhibited tastes, Jimenez had an equally murky history in Tangier, long before attaining the social status of Seville, his peasant beginnings obscured by the sophistication of wealth and power.

Falcon falls deeper into the mystery of his father's past, one that runs concurrent with that of Jimenez, confusing the Inspector's ability to separate truth from fiction. The artist's diaries rival Falcon's attention to his work on the case, as the Inspector becomes preoccupied with the history of the man who looms large in death as well as life. Beset with nightmares and unfathomable fears, Falcon encounters emotions he is ill prepared to comprehend.

More than a clever storyline, the author reaches behind the complex emotions of shocking criminal acts, with complementary plot lines that propel The Blind Man of Seville, gradually revealing the identity of the man who carefully executes the torture of his victims and Inspector Javier Falcon's internal struggle with his personal life, exacerbated by reading his famous father's journal entries. Ultimately, the true nature of the artist is revealed, exposed by his own words, turning Falcon's interpretation of reality upside-down and intimating the killer's identity.

Wilson's style of writing tunnels into the imagination, planting images, possibilities, and perverse thoughts that lodge in the mind. All in due time. The reader is complicit in the plot, a voyeur perched on Falcon's shoulder, privy to his musings and sharing his fears. This author has drawn me deeply into the subconscious texture of the plot, a willing victim. I read this novel compulsively, found it impossible to resist. Luan Gaines/ 2005.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars NONE SO BLIND..., April 16, 2003

By	charles falk (Novato, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

THE BLIND MAN OF SEVILLE is a tour de force. Robert Wilson melds police procedural with psychological thriller as he leads the reader through the social, geographic, and historic topography of Seville and Tangier. Along the way Wilson offers insights into the vagaries of memory, the discomforts of truth, and the origins of loneliness.

Seville's chief homicide detective Javier Falcon, son of a famous painter, struggles to identify a killer who mutilates his victims while showing them unendurable images from their past. At the same time Falcon is wrestling with ghosts of his own past: his divorce and the contents of his dead father's studio which he's kept locked away for nearly two years. What he learns in these simultaneous investigations brings Falcon to verge of collapse.

This may not be a book for readers who want their mysteries to be simple mind candy. It is dark, violent, and frightening. However, if you admire the dark stories of Ruth Rendel and Nicolas Freeling, you should read THE BLIND MAN OF SEVILLE.