Teresa Solana

The First Prehistoric Serial Killer and Other Stories is a collection of short stories, many of them connected with a noir sensibility. The title story opens the anthology and it is hilarifying. Someone is smashing the heads of tribesmen while they sleep. After the third death, the chief suspects something is amiss and sets our Stone Age Sam Spade on the case. With no pretense of authenticity, the story is full of anachronisms that are pure entertainment. This is a light-hearted triple show more homicide. As to the solution, well, he thinks he solved it.

There’s another story with some very class-conscious ghosts that is quite amusing and a vampire who has simply lived too long, finding the modern era not respectful enough.

I enjoyed The First Prehistoric Serial Killer and Other Stories a lot, loving the sharp humor and the completely absurd stories. It’s a short, fast collection of stories that grab you instantly, whirl you away to Absurdistan and deposit you back in reality for another ride. It’s fun and sometimes that everything you need.

The connected stories that center on Barcelona have their own element of the absurd, giving us the perspective of the hapless woman who decides to make ends meet by renting a portion of her home to vacationers who turn out to be international criminals or the translator who happens to be assigned to translate their meeting. Solano consistently resists doing the usual.

I received a copy of The First Prehistoric Serial Killer and Other Stories from the publisher through Edelweiss.

The First Prehistoric Serial Killer and Other Stories at Bitter Lemon Press
Teresa Solano at Bitter Lemon Press

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Eduard and Borja are non-identical twin brothers, though they don’t tell anyone (for reasons that remain a bit murky). Having not seen each other for many years they now run a business together which is a kind of private detective agency (with the emphasis more on the privacy than the detection). Essentially they undertake confidential assignments for Barcelona’s wealthy and influential people. One day a politician with ambitions of his Party’s highest office, Lluis Font, asks them to show more discover who painted a portrait he found of his wife and to determine if she was having an affair with the painter. He is, he says, troubled by the prospect of a scandal that might damage his chances of further political success. Before long though the brothers find themselves investigating an all together nastier crime than possible infidelity.

It is a book of small details that paint a deliciously funny portrait of the brothers and the wider society in which they live. As the book’s narrator Eduard introduces himself and his brother and explains how it is that no one would know they are brothers unless they were told. Borja is stylish and sophisticated, Eduard prefers corduroy trousers and lace-up shoes; Borja has trotted the globe for twenty years while Eduard worked in a bank; and “Borja is right wing (for aesthetic reasons, he claims) and [Eudard:] soldiers on as a non-voting disillusioned left-winger”. How could I not both such a character? Despite these differences the brothers really do get on rather well and as they fumble their way through an investigation which turns more serious than it first appeared their sibling relationship is shown to be quite strong and rather sweet.

I suspect I only scratched the surface of the satirical aspects of the novel as I’m just not that knowledgeable about Catalan politics or society though even I couldn’t miss some of the not-so-gentle gibes as the wealthy were pilloried and juxtaposed with Eduard’s middle class surrounds. These aspects do sometimes take precedence over the mystery, which at times seems like it might never be solved by ‘detectives’ who don’t even carry a camera and who are more concerned with finding a parking spot in crowded Barcelona than employing standard tailing techniques, but there is an old-fashioned whodunnit within this book too. The introduction of a series of possible suspects provides the perfect device for the author to show Catalan society in many of its guises.

Sometimes it takes a while for me to ‘get into’ a book and on other occasions I know within the first few pages that it’s my kind of thing. Happily A Not So Perfect Crime fell into the later category. The book is superbly translated (from the Catalan) by Peter Bush who has retained a speedily flowing and delightfully funny tale. The fact that the story turned out to have a surprisingly thoughtful ending, musing on the subject of justice and whose job it is to hand it out, pushed the book to a four-star rating on my scale. Scrumptious. show less

This is the second in an engaging series about two Barcelona brothers who run an under-the-radar enquiry agency, and I liked it better than number one. The big positive in the first novels -- the pair of brothers, Eduard Martinez and Borja Masdeu -- is still front and center, and even more interesting than they were the first time round. And this one adds two big plusses. The first is a pair of interesting mysteries. Who killed the lady writer? And how will the alibi for the prime suspect show more come to light? The second is a very funny take on the Catalan literary and university world. Somehow, a lot about it sounds very familiar, far from Catalonia. This is a very good, and very funny, crime novel. I will continue with the series. show less

The private consultants who aren’t quite detectives who made their debut in [b:A Not So Perfect Crime|4736470|A Not So Perfect Crime|Teresa Solana|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266914832s/4736470.jpg|4801079] are back for another adventure among the upper echelons of Barcelona society. This time they are tasked with proving that Amadeu Cabestany was not responsible for the murder of famous novelist Marina Dolç The police have arrested him on the grounds that he was heard to threaten show more Marina and on the night she was killed she had won a prestigious literary award that he was sure he was about to win. But his agent and some-time lover does not believe in his guilt and she turns to Eduard and Borja for assistance. They discover that Amadeu’s alibi is very shaky as there are no witnesses to his leaving the hotel before Dolç’s death and being mugged at a local disco and no one else seems to have much of a motive. They do however start to learn some interesting things about the famous author’s life.

There’s something about a holiday week that calls for lighter than normal reading and I was quite chuffed to find this book unread on my shelves as I had such fond memories of the first book in the series. Happily this one too is clever and funny and thoroughly engaging; perfect for reading on a warm summer day with a glass (or two) of sangria. It’s probably not the book to reach for if you like your mystery solving to be at the forefront for the length of the novel but if you don’t mind the odd (in some cases very odd) tangent or three you could do a lot worse.

Eduard is a former lefty radical who spent 20 years as a middle-class banker before setting up in business with his twin brother Borja (formerly known as Pep). We see most of the tale through his eyes as he recounts the brothers’ attempts to uncover evidence and a suspect or two. Though not as strongly as he was in the first book, he is still vaguely put out by Borja’s social climbing, especially when it requires Eduard to wear classy suits rather than his preferred jeans and otherwise operate out of his comfort zone (heaven forbid he must spend a night in a five-star hotel). But at heart the relationship between the two brothers is sweet and a definite highlight of the novel, being the source of much humour.

The rest of the humour comes from the observations about local society. Although I know nothing about Catalan literary circles the depictions of the social events with public displays of bonhomie hiding private hatreds and petty jealousies was pitch-perfect. I just inserted the names of local authors in the roles of literary versus popular fiction authors to make the humour complete.Solana seems to take great relish in satirising literary circles and I suspect she particularly enjoyed writing the scene in which most of the players are accidentally drugged so that their true natures are on full display.

More poignant moments in the novel come from the short chapters told from perspectives other than Eduard’s. Among the ‘character vignettes’ we meet a man driven to undertake an armed robbery even though he has no criminal record, get a surreal glimpse of prison life for Amadeu who the other prisoners stay clear of due to his resemblance to a movie murderer and his seeming ability to cause grown men to die at his feet and even briefly meet a long-suffering policewoman who has to wrangle a rookie cop with a big mouth. All of these are delightful interludes as well as providing little nuggets of information which help make sense of the overall story.

The crime’s resolution offered a slightly unsatisfactory note in that it didn’t quite make sense but overall I thoroughly enjoyed this slightly surreal and very witty tale of literary madness which gave me one more reason to be glad I’m a reader not a writer. I am pleased to learn that a third book has been released. Translation now please.

My rating 3.5/5 show less