In many crime series the city in which the action takes place is as important as the detective. From Philip Marlowe's Los Angeles to John Rebus's Edinburgh, cities matter in crime fiction. Barcelona, as seen through the eyes of Pepe Carvalho, the creation of the Spanish writer Manuel Vazquez Montalban, is as memorable a setting as any series has. Montalban began his writing career as a dissident journalist (he was imprisoned under Franco's regime) and as a poet, but his real success began when he published his first Carvalho novel in Spain in 1972. By the time of his death there were more than twenty of them. Carvalho, former member of the Communist Party, ex-CIA agent and loose-living gourmet, is a complex and appealing character. With his one-time convict sidekick Biscuter, he investigates the rottenness at the core of a corrupt and rapidly changing society without ever losing his essential integrity and belief in people.

Murder in the Central Committee is not, perhaps the most typical Carvalho novel (not least because the hero spends much time in what are, for him, the deeply uncongenial surroundings of Madrid) but it succeeds brilliantly in blending a clever variant of the classic private eye novel with keen insights into Spain's social and political life. The lights suddenly go out during a meeting of the central committee of the Spanish Communist Party and, when the power is switched back on, the general secretary Fernando Garrido is found murdered. An ex-communist himself, Pepe Carvalho is the obvious choice to investigate the murder and its background of intrigue and corruption. As he looks into the lives of the chief suspects in the case, he is also forced to tread warily through the minefield of Spanish politics and to guard against the deceit and potential betrayals that lurk around every corner.

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