Barcelona in 1912 is a city still recovering from the dramatic incidents of the so-called 'Tragic Week' when Catalonian conscripts bound for the unpopular war in Spanish Morocco had rebelled at the city's dockside against the royalist forces. In the fighting, many were killed, and afterwards, even more put in prison. Including an Englishman, who was later found dead in his cell. The dead man had been a prominent businessman in Gibraltar, so what had he been doing in Barcelona? What part did he play in the illicit three-way trade between Gibraltar, Spanish Morocco and Barcelona? And just how did he really meet his end - murdered, in a prison cell? The case, in Gibraltar's view, cries out for investigation - and by someone independent of the Spanish authorities. So Scotland Yard are summoned to send out one of their men - but who? Seymour ticks all the right boxes - he has experience of the tangled diplomatic world of that part of the Mediterranean. He speaks foreign languages. And possibly most importantly of all - he grew up near the docks of London's East End so with any luck, knows how to swim if pushed in the water.
Publishers Weekly Pearce's solid fifth pre-WWI historical to feature Sandor Seymour of Special Branch (after 2007's A Dead Man in Tangier ) takes the Scotland Yard detective to Barcelona, Spain, to crack a two-year-old cold case-the death, while in a Spanish prison, of an English businessman, Sam Lockhart. Lockhart was arrested during the bloody riots that erupted in Barcelona in 1910 after reserve troops refused orders to serve in Spanish Morocco. Seymour's assignment enables him to reunite with Chantale de Lissac, his half-Arab, half-French romantic interest, who uses her people skills to help him learn more about the hidden personal and political passions that may have led to Lockhart's murder. As usual, Pearce is more concerned with-and more successful at-bringing his chosen milieu to life than stumping the reader with a puzzle. Fans of the author's Gareth Owen series ( The Mark of the Pasha , etc.) will note similarities between Chantale and Owen's independent-minded Egyptian girlfriend-turned-wife. (Dec.)
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Pearce, Michael, 1933-

New York, N.Y.: Soho Constable

Soho Crime

United States, United States of America

0, 2009

207 pages ; 20 cm
Seymour, an agent of Scotland Yard, must watch out for his own life when he is sent to Barcelona in 1912 to investigate the murder of a prominent English businessman who was found dead in his jail cell after being incarcerated in the wake of the rebellion of Catalan conscripts against royalist forces

2023-06-28