Text: English, Spanish (translation)

The Pianist

Arts & Photography

VÁZQUEZ MONTALBÁN,MANUEL

Music

Quartet Books Ltd.

Assignment: Finding one of Argentina's 30,000 "Disappeared" ... likely outcome: Becoming one yourself. The Argentine army's "Dirty War" disappeared 30,000 people, and the last thing Pepe Carvalho wants is to investigate one of the vanished, even if that missing person is his cousin. But blood proves thicker than a fine Mendoza Cabernet Sauvignon, even for a jaded gourmand like Pepe, and so at his family's request he leaves Barcelona for Buenos Aires. What follows is perhaps Manuel Vázquez Montalbán's masterpiece: a combination white-knuckle investigation and moving psychological travelogue. Pepe quickly learns that "Buenos Aires is a beautiful city hell-bent on self-destruction," and finds himself on a trail involving boxers and scholars, military torturers and seductive semioticians, Borges fans and cold-blooded murderers. And despite the wonders of the Tango and the country's divine cuisine, he also knows one thing: He'll have to confront the traumas of Argentina's past head on if he wants not only to find his cousin, but simply stay alive.

The Buenos Aires Quintet (A Pepe Carvalho Mystery)

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

Melville International Crime

At a meeting of the central committee of Spain's Communist Party, in a room both locked and guarded, general secretary Fernando Garrido is stabbed to death. But the Party refuses to believe it was an inside job. They turn to former member Pepe Carvalho. But he’s soon out of his depth in unfamiliar Madrid, where he spends nearly as much time investigating the chorizo, lamb-kidneys, and tripe, and the uninspiring selection of wine on offer, as he does murder. With time out for his signature book burning (Engels’s The Housing Question), cooking (shellfish risotto), and an ill-advised bajativo (cognac, crème de menthe) inspired romp with Gladys, Pepe Carvalho leads a wry and cynical tour through the labyrinth of post-Fascist Spanish politics amid violent jostling for power.

Murder in the Central Committee (A Pepe Carvalho Mystery)

Introducing one of crime fiction’s most legendary detectives, and greatest writers, to America When Antonio Jauma, a director of the multinational conglomerate Petnay, is murdered, his widow seeks out private investigator Pepe Carvalho, who had met and forgotten the playboy executive after their single chance encounter—back when Carvalho still worked for the CIA. Jauma was a “womanizer,” according to a friend, “of the least pleasant sense,” and the police have decided that the murder is the work of an unhappy pimp. But Carvalho doggedly pursues his own phlegmatic investigation, with time out for his signature book burning (Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reasoning; Sholokov’s And Quiet Flows the Don), cooking (leek soup and a freshly-caught steamed turbot), and running with his girlfriend Charo, whose last name he can’t remember.

The Angst-Ridden Executive (A Pepe Carvalho Mystery)

Literary

Barcelona’s new soccer star is receiving death threats and Pepe Carvalho, gourmet gumshoe and former political prisoner under Franco, is hired to find out who’s behind it. Pepe Carvalho is set to retire. Content to live out the rest of his days enjoying the best food and wine Catalonia has to offer, his plans are put on hold when an executive from Barcelona's world-famous soccer team pays him a visit. “The center forward will be killed at dusk,” reads the note the executive gives to Carvalho. With that, the detective, former communist, and one-time employee of the CIA, must find out where this note is from. Is the threat real? Is it the work of one person? Or is it one of the real estate moguls tearing Barcelona apart in their battle over the most important properties of Catalonia? Here Montalbán does for the game of soccer what he has done for food. In an exquisite portrait of Spain’s most beloved sport, soccer and politics mix in a gripping mystery about the reckless excesses—and limits—of power.

Off Side (A Pepe Carvalho Mystery)

Barcelona detective Pepe Carvalho’s radical past catches up with him when a powerful businessman—a patron of artists and activists—is found dead after going missing for a year. In search of the spirit of Paul Gauguin, Stuart Pedrell—eccentric Barcelona businessman, construction magnate, dreamer, and patron of poets and painters—disappeared not long after announcing plans to travel to the South Pacific. A year later he is found stabbed to death at a construction site in Barcelona. Gourmand gumshoe Pepe Carvalho is hired by Pedrell’s wife to find out what happened. Carvalho, a jaded former communist, must travel through circles of the old anti-Franco left wing on the trail of the killer. But with little appetite for politics, Carvalho also leads us on a tour through literature, cuisine, and the criminal underbelly of Barcelona in a typically brilliant twist on the genre by a Spanish master.

Southern Seas (A Pepe Carvalho Mystery)

Only Pepe Carvalho could use a tattoo saying "Born to Raise Hell in Hell" as evidence that the police are, once again, dead wrong In a Spain still stifled under the rule of Franco, former CIA operative--and former Communist--Pepe Carvalho has become so cynical he seems to care about nothing except food and sex. He's even taken to burning the occasional book in his Barcelona apartment, just so he can have a fire going in the fireplace when he eats some bacalhao. But when he sees the cops bungling a case he's hired to investigate--that of a body pulled out of the sea--he's roused by a sense of injustice. The cops think the murder was connected to local drug dealers and brothels, and they begin raiding bars and harassing Barcelona's women of the night. But Carvalho's gut tells him something else is going on, and the cops are wrong once again. As the cops stir up more and more trouble, and Carvalho gets more and more entwined, he's only got one clue: a tattoo on the dead man's body, one which reads: "Born to Raise Hell in Hell."

Tattoo (A Pepe Carvalho Mystery)

The lights go out during a meeting of the Central Committee of the Spanish Communist Party - Fernando Garrido, the general secretary, has been murdered. Pepe Carvallo, who has worked for both the Party and the CIA, is well suited to track down Garrido's murderer. Unfortunately, the job requires a trip to Madrid - an inhospitable city whose gastronomic and sexual agendas are much inferior to those of Pepe's beloved Barcelona.

Murder in the Central Committee (A Mask Noir Title)

World Literature

Serpent's Tail

Gourmet detective Pepe Carvalho returns to investigate Argentina's turbulent political past."The modern committed writer, Montalbán exposes the criminal power relationships beneath the facade of democracy."-GuardianWhen Pepe Carvalho's uncle asks him to find his son, Raúl, in Buenos Aires, Pepe is reluctant. All he knows about Argentina is "tango, Maradona, and the disappeared" and he has no desire to find out more. But family is family and soon Carvalho is in Buenos Aires, getting more caught up in Argentina's troubled past than is good for anybody. Montalbán's unique mix of socialist politics, sexual intrigue and cultural underworlds are given a new twist against this South American backdrop.Manuel Vázquez Montalbán lives in Barcelona, where he was born in 1939. In 1998, Montalbán was awarded the Raymond Chandler Prize for his mysteries.

The Buenos Aires Quintet

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

"Montalban writes with authority and compassion - a Le Carré-like sorrow." --Publishers Weekly

Southern Seas (A Five Star Title)

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