Domingo Villar's Death on a Galician Shore is one of the better mysteries I've read in a while. Spanish author Villar has (sadly) yet to be published in the US and it was only by chance that I came across it whilst perusing the list of possible titles to be considered for the CWA International Dagger Award on the Euro Crime blog, which by the way I should mention as it is one of the best resources for crime fiction I've come across. I usually prefer to read mysteries in order, but I was able to get it from Amazon as a Kindle ebook through my library, so this was an interesting reading experience for me all around.
Galicia is in the upper northwest corner of Spain just above Portugal, and if you do a search on Google for images (go ahead and do it, I'll wait, you'll appreciate the visuals), you might, much like myself, wish you could immediately board a plane and travel there. When I searched for the title to find a description of the story I was taken with the cover illustration--slightly broody which brought windswept images to my mind. A lone figure standing by a beached boat with dark clouds looming overhead made me think I was in for a nice atmospheric read, and I found that to be very much the case.
Leo Caldas is a detective inspector in the city of Vigo on the Atlantic coast. He's a curious man, and had I read the first book, I might have a better handle on him, but it was interesting trying to sort out his personality as the story progressed. I picture him as perhaps middle age, in his 40s. He lives alone, as his former lover, Alba, has left him. I'm unsure of the circumstances, however he seems a little lonely. His father is retired and runs a winery, but I get the impression Leo spends less time with him than his father would like. Leo smokes too much, has a fondness for fine food and gets queasy in boats and cars, but when it comes to investigating murders he's observant and quite practical in his mode of working.
It's not unusual for bodies to wash ashore, and even a body with hands tied together isn't necessarily cause for alarm. More often than not it's a suicide, so when a body is found washed ashore in the small fishing village of Panxón, it's first assumed foul play isn't involved. When the pathologist notes that the plastic tie holding the hands together is turned in such a way that the man couldn't have tied it himself, Inspector Caldas and his partner Rafa Estevez set off for Panxón to investigate.
The victim is a local fisherman who spent his free time tinkering in his shed or visiting his mother and sister. Mostly he was a loner who kept to himself with no friends and more importantly no known enemies. He was last seen setting off in his boat on a Sunday morning, normally a day for rest when no fishing is allowed. Several days later he was found with a blow to the back of the head, bruised and with a packet of salt in his pocket and his boat nowhere to be found.
There are few leads and the case has little momentum. Leo learns that a small rowing boat of the fisherman had recently been grafittied with the word "murderers" and a date, but as is so often the case in a small town no one is forthcoming as to what it all means. Ten years previously the murdered man had been in an accident during a storm. The captain drowned, but the three crew members donned life jackets and were able to safely swim to shore. Now there's talk in the village that the captain has been sighted once more. Is it a ghost, or did the captain not die?
The mystery is twisty and turny, and it's through questioning and piecing together bits of information that Leo is able to sort through what's fact and what's fiction. This is the sort of mystery where all the evidence is set before the reader with a fair few red herrings thrown in, but I still found myself surprised more than once. Inspector Caldas is an interesting character and Rafa his sidekick, not a native Galician by the way, somewhat quirky. Rafa has little patience for the laid back way of doing things in Galicia and less for the vagueness that plagues conversation there. He's more a man of action, even if that means smacking a witness or breaking down a door much to Leo's chagrin. Needless to say Leo does his best to rein him in, but the two make for an appealing pair.
Although the mystery is fairly simply told, it's everything else that makes this such an enjoyable read. Apparently Vigo's climate is comparable to that of the Pacific Northwest, so mild and rainy. I couldn't help but think what a perfect crime setting this was as I was reading. Throw together interesting characters with room to develop and a small village with suspicious locals who spit every time a dead sea captain is mentioned, and for me anyway, I thought it had all the right ingredients for a very successful story. A note on the translation--it's translated from the Spanish by Sonia Soto, who did an excellent job. Often with books translated from another language, it's very obvious the book has been translated. The prose feels clunky and dialogue stilted, but Soto's translation felt seamless. The only thing that felt foreign was the setting, which was as it should be--not the language. Happily Villar's first book, Water-Blue Eyes, is available (in book format!) from Amazon (published by the small independent UK publisher Arcadia Books), and it is even now winging its way to me.