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A Small Death in Lisbon
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In this intelligent international thriller, Robert Wilson paints two parallel portraits: an historical psychological tale of suspense, and a contemporary murder mystery. Though separated by time, both tales inexorably and brilliantly come together. The first takes place during World War II, where Klaus Felsen, a prominent Berlin factory owner, is recruited by the SS to procure wolfram, an alloy vital to Hitler's blitzkreig. Felsen, a smart but ultimately selfish man, is highly successful in his dealmaking, albeit always at the expense of others. Greed, murder, and lust entwine to destroy not only his own, but numerous lives.
In this intelligent international thriller, Robert Wilson paints two parallel portraits: an historical psychological tale of suspense, and a contemporary murder mystery. Though separated by time, both tales inexorably and brilliantly come together. The first takes place during World War II, where Klaus Felsen, a prominent Berlin factory owner, is recruited by the SS to procure wolfram, an alloy vital to Hitler's blitzkreig. Felsen, a smart but ultimately selfish man, is highly successful in his dealmaking, albeit always at the expense of others. Greed, murder, and lust entwine to destroy not only his own, but numerous lives.
The second and parallel story is the present-day murder investigation of a troubled, promiscuous young girl found dead in Lisbon. The tenacious and highly ethical Inspector Ze Coelho, with the help of Carlos, a young detective assigned to the case, discovers a dysfunctional family driven by revenge and scandal, empowered by lies. Despite numerous plots twists and turns, the Inspector-ever in search of the truth-finds the murderer, but also unexpectedly unearths long-forgotten crimes. It's this "small death in Lisbon" that links the tragic past of Nazi Germany and fascist Portugal to the present, where it becomes clear that the sins of the father do rain down on future generations.
Wilson's page-turning story of political intrigue is unpredictable and highly original. In the tradition of John Le Carr� and Martin Cruz Smith, Wilson's first novel to be published in the U.S. marks the debut of a deft storytelling talent.
448 pages, ebook
First published July 19, 1999
598 people are currently reading
4396 people want to read
About the author
Robert Wilson
479 books518 followersRobert Wilson has written thirteen novels including the Bruce Medway noir series set in West Africa and two Lisbon books with WW2 settings the first of which, A Small Death in Lisbon, won the CWA Gold Dagger in 1999 and the International Deutsche Krimi prize in 2003. He has written four psychological crime novels set in Seville, with his Spanish detective, Javier Falcón. Two of these books (The Blind Man of Seville and The Silent and the Damned) were filmed and broadcast on Sky Atlantic as ‘Falcón’ in 2012. A film of the fourth Falcón book was released in Spain in 2014 under the title La Ignorancia de la Sangre. Capital Punishment, the first novel in his latest series of pure thrillers set in London and featuring kidnap consultant, Charles Boxer, was published in 2013 and was nominated for the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger. This was followed by You Will Never Find Me in 2014. The third book in the series, Stealing People, will be published in 2015. Robert Wilson loves to cook food from all over the world but especially Spanish, Portuguese, Indian and Thai. He also loves to walk with dogs…and people, too.
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February 17, 2012
This book was recommended to me as a high-quality thriller... something that's a bit hard to find, sometimes.
When it came in the mail, I have to say, my first thought was, "why does it have to have swastikas all over it?" OK, fine, Nazis, villains, but you still don't always want to be carrying swastikas around with you on the subway... It put me off from reading it for a while.
But - I got around to it.
It's a very well-written book. I haven't visited Portugal, but I was convinced that the author effectively captured the setting and culture of Lisbon.
However, the plotting and pacing were sometimes... off. There are two stories here - one in the 1940's, about a German businessman who is recruited into the SS and set to acquiring stocks of the rare mineral wolfram (tungsten) from Portugal. The other is set in the 1990s, with a police investigator looking into the murder of a young girl whose body is found on the beach.
There is absolutely no connection between the two alternating narratives until page 289. That's kind of a lot of pages. The 1940s narrative develops very slowly, and, this isn't really a spoiler, but a lot of the details from that narrative NEVER become relevant to the events of the 1990s.
After this very slow buildup, the end is a crazy rush! Car chases! Murders! Betrayals! Plot twists galore! All jammed into the last 50 pages or so! It's fun and exciting, but it doesn't really fit with the flow of the rest of the book.
Also, this is not really a criticism, but a reader should know that getting into this book is signing up for spending a lot of time with some really despicable people. I mean, we are talking SS officers here, and there are war atrocities, sexually perverse murders, etc. At times I was longing for some decent human beings to show their faces...
One more note - I kind of objected to the assumption that healthy, happy teenagers would NEVER get involved in a sexual threesome... ;-)
Oh, and just ONE more note... to point out the importance of proofreading. One of the chapter headers has a typo. It says "1995" instead of "1955." Forty years makes a big difference, in this book! That was very confusing, until I figured it out...
All this said, overall, I did think the book was quite well done, and well-researched, especially for the murder-mystery genre. I would read more from this author.
When it came in the mail, I have to say, my first thought was, "why does it have to have swastikas all over it?" OK, fine, Nazis, villains, but you still don't always want to be carrying swastikas around with you on the subway... It put me off from reading it for a while.
But - I got around to it.
It's a very well-written book. I haven't visited Portugal, but I was convinced that the author effectively captured the setting and culture of Lisbon.
However, the plotting and pacing were sometimes... off. There are two stories here - one in the 1940's, about a German businessman who is recruited into the SS and set to acquiring stocks of the rare mineral wolfram (tungsten) from Portugal. The other is set in the 1990s, with a police investigator looking into the murder of a young girl whose body is found on the beach.
There is absolutely no connection between the two alternating narratives until page 289. That's kind of a lot of pages. The 1940s narrative develops very slowly, and, this isn't really a spoiler, but a lot of the details from that narrative NEVER become relevant to the events of the 1990s.
After this very slow buildup, the end is a crazy rush! Car chases! Murders! Betrayals! Plot twists galore! All jammed into the last 50 pages or so! It's fun and exciting, but it doesn't really fit with the flow of the rest of the book.
Also, this is not really a criticism, but a reader should know that getting into this book is signing up for spending a lot of time with some really despicable people. I mean, we are talking SS officers here, and there are war atrocities, sexually perverse murders, etc. At times I was longing for some decent human beings to show their faces...
One more note - I kind of objected to the assumption that healthy, happy teenagers would NEVER get involved in a sexual threesome... ;-)
Oh, and just ONE more note... to point out the importance of proofreading. One of the chapter headers has a typo. It says "1995" instead of "1955." Forty years makes a big difference, in this book! That was very confusing, until I figured it out...
All this said, overall, I did think the book was quite well done, and well-researched, especially for the murder-mystery genre. I would read more from this author.
February 4, 2009
The story begins in the 1990's in Portugal when the body of a teenaged girl is found on a beach brutally murdered. Inspector Ze Coelho and his colleague are first on the scene and begin the investigation by tracking the final days of Catalina's life where they discover her innocence was destroyed by sex, drugs and emotional abuse.
The story then backtracks to 1941 when Klaus Felsen is forced out of his Berlin factory and into the ranks of the SS. He is sent to Lisbon where his mandate is to procure at any cost wolfram an essential metal needed by the 3rd Reich. Lisbon is a hotbed of activity and the base of operation where he meets a man who plunges him into a nightmarish world of brutality...
By masterfully moving back and forth from one era to another, connections and secrets are slowly unravelled to the present day Portugal. In doing so, Coelho skilfully links the past to the murder of Caterina...
This is a remarkable and powerful fiction novel based on historical facts, beautifully structured with inspiring characters and a gripping tale full of machination. The complicated murder plot involves the life of many suspects converging on the victim. The Felsen story takes all kinds of twists and turns giving us an insight into how the Nazi paid using "Nazi Gold" and the Salazar controlled central bank.
Both Catalina and Klaus stories are interesting on their own leading readers to wonder how they tie in. Wilson drops clues along the way revealing an incredibly complex ending that is as clever as it is intricate. This novel has a lot of descriptive sex and violence which may not appeal to all readers. In whole this book was fascinating and one of the best I have read in a long time, I will definitely be checking other novels written by this author.
The story then backtracks to 1941 when Klaus Felsen is forced out of his Berlin factory and into the ranks of the SS. He is sent to Lisbon where his mandate is to procure at any cost wolfram an essential metal needed by the 3rd Reich. Lisbon is a hotbed of activity and the base of operation where he meets a man who plunges him into a nightmarish world of brutality...
By masterfully moving back and forth from one era to another, connections and secrets are slowly unravelled to the present day Portugal. In doing so, Coelho skilfully links the past to the murder of Caterina...
This is a remarkable and powerful fiction novel based on historical facts, beautifully structured with inspiring characters and a gripping tale full of machination. The complicated murder plot involves the life of many suspects converging on the victim. The Felsen story takes all kinds of twists and turns giving us an insight into how the Nazi paid using "Nazi Gold" and the Salazar controlled central bank.
Both Catalina and Klaus stories are interesting on their own leading readers to wonder how they tie in. Wilson drops clues along the way revealing an incredibly complex ending that is as clever as it is intricate. This novel has a lot of descriptive sex and violence which may not appeal to all readers. In whole this book was fascinating and one of the best I have read in a long time, I will definitely be checking other novels written by this author.
May 15, 2009
This book tells the story of a Portuguese police detective investigating the murder of a promiscuous teenage girl in Lisbon. The investigation is interrupted by frequent flashbacks to World War II, when a Nazi SS officer named Felsen comes to Portugal to acquire wolfram for Germany and hide Nazi gold via a banking venture.
I found the history of Portugal in World War II to be very interesting. Beyond that, I didn't love this book. The police detective, Coehlo, is a likable protagonist, but the murder and the rationale for it seemed overly convoluted and unsatisfying to me. Other than Coehlo, his daughter and his partner on the police force, pretty much every major character in the book is really unlikeable. I might have liked this book more had I been able to connect with the characters a bit more.
My other big issue was that there was such an over-the-top amount of violence against women in this story. Every chapter seemed to provide graphic description of another rape. It felt gratuitous and often took me out of the story. Women only seem to exist in this book as sexual objects and victims.
I found the history of Portugal in World War II to be very interesting. Beyond that, I didn't love this book. The police detective, Coehlo, is a likable protagonist, but the murder and the rationale for it seemed overly convoluted and unsatisfying to me. Other than Coehlo, his daughter and his partner on the police force, pretty much every major character in the book is really unlikeable. I might have liked this book more had I been able to connect with the characters a bit more.
My other big issue was that there was such an over-the-top amount of violence against women in this story. Every chapter seemed to provide graphic description of another rape. It felt gratuitous and often took me out of the story. Women only seem to exist in this book as sexual objects and victims.
May 29, 2012
I like a solid plot. And if the plot is complex, so much the better. Usually a complex plot will depend on a co-incidence or two, but still hang plausibly together. This book fails that test. There are more twists and turns and surprises than in any three novels I've read. And they don't hang together. By the end of the book I was laughing out loud as some of the more arcane bits of the plot were revealed at last. Somebodies cousins uncles ex-wife's lover shot ... Schools of red herrings ... well you get the idea. The main motivation for the entirely of the plot is ridiculous; no other way to say it and no, I'm not going to spoil it. Besides, in 20,000 characters the best I could hope to do would be to summarize this mess.
The book suffers from another failing. I like a book with at least a few attractive characters. Someone to root for, or feel satisfied at their victory over whatever or whomever. By the end of this novel the author could have put the whole cast into a sinking boat and I would have applauded. Nary a decent human being in the work.
Sadly it is a well written book. The dialog is good, the settings are well done and the general tone is quite nice.
Needless to say, I'll not be reading another book by Robert Wilson. Life is too short and there are many other fine authors to enjoy. Save your time and money ... read a nice novel by Connelly, Disher, Penny or Rankin instead. You'll thank me.
The book suffers from another failing. I like a book with at least a few attractive characters. Someone to root for, or feel satisfied at their victory over whatever or whomever. By the end of this novel the author could have put the whole cast into a sinking boat and I would have applauded. Nary a decent human being in the work.
Sadly it is a well written book. The dialog is good, the settings are well done and the general tone is quite nice.
Needless to say, I'll not be reading another book by Robert Wilson. Life is too short and there are many other fine authors to enjoy. Save your time and money ... read a nice novel by Connelly, Disher, Penny or Rankin instead. You'll thank me.
February 23, 2019
Dieses Buch läßt mich sehr zwiegespalten zurück.
Es handelt sich um einen politischen Thriller, in dem zwei Handlungsstränge aus verschiedenen Zeitebenen sehr geschickt verflochten, zusammengeführt und am Ende wieder aufgedröselt werden. Erzählstrang 1 beginnt in den 40er Jahren des letzten Jahrhunderts in Berlin mit ein paar wirklich widerlichen Exemplaren des lokalen Nazigesocks' und ihren scheußlichen Verbrechen. Der zweite Erzählstrang spielt Ende der 90er Jahre in Lissabon und beginnt mit dem Mord an einer Schülerin.
Der Plot ist äußerst komplex, sehr geschickt verwoben und auch gut erzählt.
Was das Buch für mich dann aber doch eher unverdaulich macht, ist zum einen die starke Sättigung der Geschichte mit wirklich brutalen Gewaltszenen und zum anderen die die Art und Weise, wie Sex in der Geschichte dargestellt wird. Bis auf ganz wenige Ausnahmen ist in diesem Buch Sex im positiven Fall entweder eine rein triebgesteuerte Verrichtung, die nicht mal in die Nähe einer erotischen, geschweige denn einer emotionalen, Anmutung kommt, oder im weniger positiven Fall ein gewalttätiger und brutaler Angriff.
Es handelt sich um einen politischen Thriller, in dem zwei Handlungsstränge aus verschiedenen Zeitebenen sehr geschickt verflochten, zusammengeführt und am Ende wieder aufgedröselt werden. Erzählstrang 1 beginnt in den 40er Jahren des letzten Jahrhunderts in Berlin mit ein paar wirklich widerlichen Exemplaren des lokalen Nazigesocks' und ihren scheußlichen Verbrechen. Der zweite Erzählstrang spielt Ende der 90er Jahre in Lissabon und beginnt mit dem Mord an einer Schülerin.
Der Plot ist äußerst komplex, sehr geschickt verwoben und auch gut erzählt.
Was das Buch für mich dann aber doch eher unverdaulich macht, ist zum einen die starke Sättigung der Geschichte mit wirklich brutalen Gewaltszenen und zum anderen die die Art und Weise, wie Sex in der Geschichte dargestellt wird. Bis auf ganz wenige Ausnahmen ist in diesem Buch Sex im positiven Fall entweder eine rein triebgesteuerte Verrichtung, die nicht mal in die Nähe einer erotischen, geschweige denn einer emotionalen, Anmutung kommt, oder im weniger positiven Fall ein gewalttätiger und brutaler Angriff.
October 29, 2019
'A Small Death in Lisbon' by Robert Wilson is two books in one for at least 500 pages. The first story, told in alternating chapters, is about a Lisbon homicide police detective's investigation of a sex murder of a young girl in 1998. The second novel is a World War II story involving Portuguese smugglers and opportunists who play a murderous cat-and-mouse game with Germany's SS Nazis. The two stories are seemingly unconnected for quite a loooooooong time.
Inspector Zé Coelho (José Afonso Coelho), the Portuguese detective, recently lost his wife in a car accident. He is still grieving, but it has been a year since she died. He has a daughter, Olivia, who is seventeen going on thirty. It is a time of change for Zé. Besides the death of his wife, he has lost a lot of weight, shaved off his beard which has changed his appearance to a more youthful 41 years old, and he has a new partner, Carlos Pinto, assigned him by his boss, Eng. Jaime Leal Narciso.
Narciso calls early to Zé's house, waking him up. A girl of fifteen, naked and bloody, has been found on the beach.
Solving the murder ends up involving Zé with people from all walks of Portuguese society! This could cost him dearly, even his life! Portugal underwent a revolution in 1974 - changing an extreme politically-right dictatorship to a democracy. The case soon becomes convoluted, involving people who were Nazi collaborators and Nazi victims. Zé ends up striving against strings being pulled by important politicians and businessmen who were known to lean to the right politically as well as those folks who were and are Communists.
The second novel takes place in 1941. The narrator is a thirty-two-year-old multilingual businessman, owner of a factory which manufactured railroad couplings. His name is Klaus Felsen. He will, of course, 'sponsor' the SS for the obvious business advantages (taking them to dinners for contracts), but he finds the men of the SS unappealing. They never let up on trying to enlist him. Besides business, his other interest is a woman, Eva Brücke. She owns a successful nightclub, Die Rote Katze. The club is also sort of a brothel, and Eva is a classic demimonde.
Things happen, and Felsen is forced to join the SS after they stop playing softball with him and resort to torture. Giving in to their tricks of carrot-and-stick tactics (he is made an officer in the SS after they show him the fist behind the power of the SS), Felsen is tasked by SS-Gruppenführer Lehrer, his new boss and scary monster, with gaining by legitimate and illegitimate means a metal called wolfram, important for manufacturing impenetrable tanks. Wolfram is in high demand, and Germany is in competition with Britain and America in attaining it. Portugal is the biggest supplier of wolfram in the world.
Between the stresses of the war, his coerced work in the SS, and his uncertain relationship with Eva, he definitely becomes an unreliable broken personality, not exactly a stable employee.
From Wikipedia:
"The Schutzstaffel (SS; also stylized as with Armanen runes; German pronunciation; literally "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II. It began with a small guard unit known as the Saal-Schutz ("Hall Security") made up of NSDAP volunteers to provide security for party meetings in Munich. In 1925, Heinrich Himmler joined the unit, which had by then been reformed and given its final name. Under his direction (1929–45) it grew from a small paramilitary formation during the Weimar Republic to one of the most powerful organizations in Nazi Germany. From 1929 until the regime's collapse in 1945, the SS was the foremost agency of security, surveillance, and terror within Germany and German-occupied Europe.
The two main constituent groups were the Allgemeine SS (General SS) and Waffen-SS (Armed SS). The Allgemeine SS was responsible for enforcing the racial policy of Nazi Germany and general policing, whereas the Waffen-SS consisted of combat units within Nazi Germany's military. A third component of the SS, the SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV), ran the concentration camps and extermination camps. Additional subdivisions of the SS included the Gestapo and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) organizations. They were tasked with the detection of actual or potential enemies of the Nazi state, the neutralization of any opposition, policing the German people for their commitment to Nazi ideology, and providing domestic and foreign intelligence.
The SS was the organization most responsible for the genocidal killing of an estimated 5.5 to 6 million Jews and millions of other victims during the Holocaust. Members of all of its branches committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during World War II (1939–45). The SS was also involved in commercial enterprises and exploited concentration camp inmates as slave labor. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS-Tote...
Wolfram, per Wikipedia:
"Tungsten, or wolfram, is a chemical element with the symbol W and atomic number 74. The name tungsten comes from the former Swedish name for the tungstate mineral scheelite, tung sten or "heavy stone". Tungsten is a rare metal found naturally on Earth almost exclusively combined with other elements in chemical compounds rather than alone. It was identified as a new element in 1781 and first isolated as a metal in 1783. Its important ores include wolframite and scheelite.
"Tungsten's many alloys have numerous applications, including incandescent light bulb filaments, X-ray tubes (as both the filament and target), electrodes in gas tungsten arc welding, superalloys, and radiation shielding. Tungsten's hardness and high density give it military applications in penetrating projectiles. Tungsten compounds are also often used as industrial catalysts."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungsten
Perhaps some of you may remember a publisher of science fiction, called Ace Books. I LOVED Ace novels!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ace_Books
One of the things which fascinated me about Ace novels was they used a publishing gimmick called tête-bêche.
The term "dos-à-dos" is also used to refer to a single volume in which two texts are bound together, with one text rotated 180° relative to the other, such that when one text runs head-to-tail, the other runs tail-to-head. However, this type of binding is properly termed tête-bêche (/tɛtˈbɛʃ/) (from the French meaning "head-to-toe", literally referring to a type of bed). Books bound in this way have no back cover, but instead have two front covers and a single spine with two titles. When a reader reaches the end of the text of one of the works, the next page is the (upside-down) last page of the other work. These volumes are also referred to as "upside-down books" or "reversible books".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dos-à-d...
I have absolutely no reason to write of this publishing gimmick here in this review, gentle reader, other than that 'A Small Death in Lisbon' brought the memory back of my now lost collection of tête-bêche Ace science fiction books. I couldn't understand the connection between these two very different stories - a noir WWII thriller and a detective story involving a murder. It isn't until the last few chapters either of these very convoluted twisting tales show any hints of having anything to do with each other. They are like separate braids on a person's head, in completely different hemispheres! Then, BANG! The braids are pulled over each other into another, single, twisted configuration! I thought it was done, but, no! Another braid suddenly pops out, a short tail, hidden under the new big thick one!
'A Small Death in Lisbon' is one mind-boggling mystery. It kept me on my toes!
Inspector Zé Coelho (José Afonso Coelho), the Portuguese detective, recently lost his wife in a car accident. He is still grieving, but it has been a year since she died. He has a daughter, Olivia, who is seventeen going on thirty. It is a time of change for Zé. Besides the death of his wife, he has lost a lot of weight, shaved off his beard which has changed his appearance to a more youthful 41 years old, and he has a new partner, Carlos Pinto, assigned him by his boss, Eng. Jaime Leal Narciso.
Narciso calls early to Zé's house, waking him up. A girl of fifteen, naked and bloody, has been found on the beach.
Solving the murder ends up involving Zé with people from all walks of Portuguese society! This could cost him dearly, even his life! Portugal underwent a revolution in 1974 - changing an extreme politically-right dictatorship to a democracy. The case soon becomes convoluted, involving people who were Nazi collaborators and Nazi victims. Zé ends up striving against strings being pulled by important politicians and businessmen who were known to lean to the right politically as well as those folks who were and are Communists.
The second novel takes place in 1941. The narrator is a thirty-two-year-old multilingual businessman, owner of a factory which manufactured railroad couplings. His name is Klaus Felsen. He will, of course, 'sponsor' the SS for the obvious business advantages (taking them to dinners for contracts), but he finds the men of the SS unappealing. They never let up on trying to enlist him. Besides business, his other interest is a woman, Eva Brücke. She owns a successful nightclub, Die Rote Katze. The club is also sort of a brothel, and Eva is a classic demimonde.
Things happen, and Felsen is forced to join the SS after they stop playing softball with him and resort to torture. Giving in to their tricks of carrot-and-stick tactics (he is made an officer in the SS after they show him the fist behind the power of the SS), Felsen is tasked by SS-Gruppenführer Lehrer, his new boss and scary monster, with gaining by legitimate and illegitimate means a metal called wolfram, important for manufacturing impenetrable tanks. Wolfram is in high demand, and Germany is in competition with Britain and America in attaining it. Portugal is the biggest supplier of wolfram in the world.
Between the stresses of the war, his coerced work in the SS, and his uncertain relationship with Eva, he definitely becomes an unreliable broken personality, not exactly a stable employee.
From Wikipedia:
"The Schutzstaffel (SS; also stylized as with Armanen runes; German pronunciation; literally "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II. It began with a small guard unit known as the Saal-Schutz ("Hall Security") made up of NSDAP volunteers to provide security for party meetings in Munich. In 1925, Heinrich Himmler joined the unit, which had by then been reformed and given its final name. Under his direction (1929–45) it grew from a small paramilitary formation during the Weimar Republic to one of the most powerful organizations in Nazi Germany. From 1929 until the regime's collapse in 1945, the SS was the foremost agency of security, surveillance, and terror within Germany and German-occupied Europe.
The two main constituent groups were the Allgemeine SS (General SS) and Waffen-SS (Armed SS). The Allgemeine SS was responsible for enforcing the racial policy of Nazi Germany and general policing, whereas the Waffen-SS consisted of combat units within Nazi Germany's military. A third component of the SS, the SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV), ran the concentration camps and extermination camps. Additional subdivisions of the SS included the Gestapo and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) organizations. They were tasked with the detection of actual or potential enemies of the Nazi state, the neutralization of any opposition, policing the German people for their commitment to Nazi ideology, and providing domestic and foreign intelligence.
The SS was the organization most responsible for the genocidal killing of an estimated 5.5 to 6 million Jews and millions of other victims during the Holocaust. Members of all of its branches committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during World War II (1939–45). The SS was also involved in commercial enterprises and exploited concentration camp inmates as slave labor. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS-Tote...
Wolfram, per Wikipedia:
"Tungsten, or wolfram, is a chemical element with the symbol W and atomic number 74. The name tungsten comes from the former Swedish name for the tungstate mineral scheelite, tung sten or "heavy stone". Tungsten is a rare metal found naturally on Earth almost exclusively combined with other elements in chemical compounds rather than alone. It was identified as a new element in 1781 and first isolated as a metal in 1783. Its important ores include wolframite and scheelite.
"Tungsten's many alloys have numerous applications, including incandescent light bulb filaments, X-ray tubes (as both the filament and target), electrodes in gas tungsten arc welding, superalloys, and radiation shielding. Tungsten's hardness and high density give it military applications in penetrating projectiles. Tungsten compounds are also often used as industrial catalysts."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungsten
Perhaps some of you may remember a publisher of science fiction, called Ace Books. I LOVED Ace novels!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ace_Books
One of the things which fascinated me about Ace novels was they used a publishing gimmick called tête-bêche.
The term "dos-à-dos" is also used to refer to a single volume in which two texts are bound together, with one text rotated 180° relative to the other, such that when one text runs head-to-tail, the other runs tail-to-head. However, this type of binding is properly termed tête-bêche (/tɛtˈbɛʃ/) (from the French meaning "head-to-toe", literally referring to a type of bed). Books bound in this way have no back cover, but instead have two front covers and a single spine with two titles. When a reader reaches the end of the text of one of the works, the next page is the (upside-down) last page of the other work. These volumes are also referred to as "upside-down books" or "reversible books".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dos-à-d...
I have absolutely no reason to write of this publishing gimmick here in this review, gentle reader, other than that 'A Small Death in Lisbon' brought the memory back of my now lost collection of tête-bêche Ace science fiction books. I couldn't understand the connection between these two very different stories - a noir WWII thriller and a detective story involving a murder. It isn't until the last few chapters either of these very convoluted twisting tales show any hints of having anything to do with each other. They are like separate braids on a person's head, in completely different hemispheres! Then, BANG! The braids are pulled over each other into another, single, twisted configuration! I thought it was done, but, no! Another braid suddenly pops out, a short tail, hidden under the new big thick one!
'A Small Death in Lisbon' is one mind-boggling mystery. It kept me on my toes!
April 1, 2013
A while back I reviewed Robert Wilson‘s Blood is Dirt on thedevilsroad.com. I didn’t really like the African set thriller, the Graham Greene construct was strained, but I decided to go back to Wilson and give him another try with A Small Death in Lisbon.
Great book. Ambitious in scope, this novel set in Portugal has two narratives, one set in the 1940s when the Nazis exported Wolfram for the war effort. We follow Klaus Felsen, a German industrialist through the war years. Felsen is a fascinating character, a gentle psycho who loses it when he murders a British competitor and rapes his Portuguese best friend’s young concubine. What goes around comes around and the entire sorry saga re-emerges into post fascist 90s Lisbon when decent cop Ze Coehlo investigates the murder of a wayward teenage girl. Eventually the two stories intersect but they both stand up well by themselves and the convoluted pay-off does not come till right at the end of the book. Wilson manages a difficult task well – that of having a pretty disgusting, volatile and selfish but hugely interesting character, Felsen, guide us through a large chunk of the book, no mean feat in a genre where readers scream for heroes whoever incomplete. Felsen embues the book with a great dose of Noir and realism.
But the most fascinating aspect of A Small Death in Lisbon is the portrayal of Portugal itself – the transition from fascism into uneasy democracy. In both incarnations, greedy men are at the top of the pile, well protected, ruthless and ready to murder at the slightest threat to their interests. It’s only troubled Coelho’s blind heroism that leads to the tumble of a few.
A wonderfully dark tale with language that is so good one can almost smell the Portuguese countryside, the olive trees, the cheese and the wine, with murder, betrayal and lost humanity dripping off every page into the bargain. History at its most gripping.
Robert Wilson’s A Small Death in Lisbon is on a par with the Bernie Gunther novels by Philip Kerr, and though Wilson writes with less cynicism, he has the same eye for detail, historical and otherwise.
Great book. Ambitious in scope, this novel set in Portugal has two narratives, one set in the 1940s when the Nazis exported Wolfram for the war effort. We follow Klaus Felsen, a German industrialist through the war years. Felsen is a fascinating character, a gentle psycho who loses it when he murders a British competitor and rapes his Portuguese best friend’s young concubine. What goes around comes around and the entire sorry saga re-emerges into post fascist 90s Lisbon when decent cop Ze Coehlo investigates the murder of a wayward teenage girl. Eventually the two stories intersect but they both stand up well by themselves and the convoluted pay-off does not come till right at the end of the book. Wilson manages a difficult task well – that of having a pretty disgusting, volatile and selfish but hugely interesting character, Felsen, guide us through a large chunk of the book, no mean feat in a genre where readers scream for heroes whoever incomplete. Felsen embues the book with a great dose of Noir and realism.
But the most fascinating aspect of A Small Death in Lisbon is the portrayal of Portugal itself – the transition from fascism into uneasy democracy. In both incarnations, greedy men are at the top of the pile, well protected, ruthless and ready to murder at the slightest threat to their interests. It’s only troubled Coelho’s blind heroism that leads to the tumble of a few.
A wonderfully dark tale with language that is so good one can almost smell the Portuguese countryside, the olive trees, the cheese and the wine, with murder, betrayal and lost humanity dripping off every page into the bargain. History at its most gripping.
Robert Wilson’s A Small Death in Lisbon is on a par with the Bernie Gunther novels by Philip Kerr, and though Wilson writes with less cynicism, he has the same eye for detail, historical and otherwise.
November 10, 2019
3.5 stars. This is a dual timeline story and a weaving of a web. It opens with a murder of a teenage girl in the late 199o's , an investigation is begun and it is assigned to Ze Coehlo and his new partner Carlos. Coehlo, we discover is a truth-seeker, and there is a beautiful description of his thoughts about human deception and his work at seeking the truth. I like Coehlo. He is a gut instinct player, yet has some very insightful reflections.
The other timeline begins during WWII and slowly inches it's way forward until an intersection with the contemporary story. Initially, I found a lot of the Felsen storyline during the war as tedious and often disgusting. As some connections begin to be revealed, the pace of the older story definitely picks up.
It is quite a convoluted plot and how everything unravels once Coehlo starts pulling on the strings, has people dropping like flies. Promiscuity is a common attribute among a number of characters in addition to being vile and vindictive throughout the novel. One wonders about how they got to be that way, if they got what they deserved and whether there could be forgiveness. What would one do to survive under horrific circumstances? Can there be redemption? Justice? The end does not necessarily wrap everything up in a neat little bow.
I was hoping to come away with a better feel for the culture of Portugal, but there was some history thrown in, unfortunately not about Portugal's finest years.
The other timeline begins during WWII and slowly inches it's way forward until an intersection with the contemporary story. Initially, I found a lot of the Felsen storyline during the war as tedious and often disgusting. As some connections begin to be revealed, the pace of the older story definitely picks up.
It is quite a convoluted plot and how everything unravels once Coehlo starts pulling on the strings, has people dropping like flies. Promiscuity is a common attribute among a number of characters in addition to being vile and vindictive throughout the novel. One wonders about how they got to be that way, if they got what they deserved and whether there could be forgiveness. What would one do to survive under horrific circumstances? Can there be redemption? Justice? The end does not necessarily wrap everything up in a neat little bow.
I was hoping to come away with a better feel for the culture of Portugal, but there was some history thrown in, unfortunately not about Portugal's finest years.
December 4, 2013
I'm not going to finish this. This book is artificial. The writing has the stench of the studio to it. It reads well..., in fact, too well... goes down as smooth as a Jamaca malt (whatever the f&k that means...) - there are manufactured sex scenes, novelistic descriptions of Nazi generals the author, obviously, has never met... and who therefore feel somewhat formulaic. In other words, this book/writer is a pro - he's very proficient -- you can actually see him at work, laying down the boards of his sentences -- and it feels contrived.
To me that's bad writing...
To me that's bad writing...
Read
November 10, 2022In his A Small Death in Lisbon, Robert Wilson excels at portraying atmospherics: Berlin and Nazi Germany in the early 1940s, and Lisbon and rural Portugal in the 1940s and the postwar years. A Small Death in Lisbon’s two major plots lines — the murder of a wealthy teenage girl in Lisbon in the 1990s and the competition between the British and the Germans for the purchase of tungsten in World War Two — co-exist, leaving the reader to wonder whether, how, and when the two plots will converge. Layered within these plots are portraits of rural Portugal and the rise of the Portuguese novo rico, both educated and uneducated. The murder mystery feels secondary to the atmospherics and portraits of Portuguese society. All in all, an absorbing and truly memorable novel: I first read A Small Death in Lisbon when it was published in 1999 and just reread it, with no loss of interest or enjoyment.
”’Are you interested in books, Inspector?’ ‘I like Saramago.’ ‘Really? Your surprise me.’ “He has the same attitude toward punctuation that I do.’ ‘You don’t need it.’ ‘Or maybe he’s no good at it’
”’Are you interested in books, Inspector?’ ‘I like Saramago.’ ‘Really? Your surprise me.’ “He has the same attitude toward punctuation that I do.’ ‘You don’t need it.’ ‘Or maybe he’s no good at it’
August 9, 2013
I enjoy complex plots, which this had, and intermingled histories, which this also had. Unlike some other reviewers, I didn't find all the overlapping relationships to be unbelievable- that seems to happen in the tiny worlds of the 1%.
I wish there had been more Portugal in this book. The author clearly meant for the country to be another character in it, but he didn't describe it well enough for those of us who haven't been there. That might be an asset if you're from there, but I felt like I'd missed 1/3 of the plot.
Ze Coehlo, the protagonist, is out of the school of Arkady Renko, whom I love. He doesn't have the dark humor that Renko has, alas, which allows him and us to detach a little from the horrors and jadedness of their jobs. Also, I love that he's Inspector Rabbit :) I bet that Rabbit has different connotations in Portugal than here and I'd've loved to know what they are. Come to think of it, this book's treatment of the past coming back to haunt the present is very reminiscent of the Arkady Renko series, too. It has a lot in common with Wolves Eat Dogs. It's not as easy of a read, though, and I had to keep flipping back to figure out which character whose name has Olive in in we were talking about, especially the women- there was nothing to make one stand out from another.
In fact, what made it less than 4 starts for me was the author's treatment of women. I am SO TIRED of women's roles being strictly, passively, 2 dimensionally Victim, and in general existing merely to motivate men to behave violently.
I can't help but wonder- is this what it's like for Jews to read about WWII? They are always portrayed as passive victims, when really they were fighting back at every step. That part never seems to make it into the movies. You read enough of these books and you get to thinking it might be time to just get rid of men. Fortunately some of my best friends are men, so I know better. But still, authors, up your game! please!
I wish there had been more Portugal in this book. The author clearly meant for the country to be another character in it, but he didn't describe it well enough for those of us who haven't been there. That might be an asset if you're from there, but I felt like I'd missed 1/3 of the plot.
Ze Coehlo, the protagonist, is out of the school of Arkady Renko, whom I love. He doesn't have the dark humor that Renko has, alas, which allows him and us to detach a little from the horrors and jadedness of their jobs. Also, I love that he's Inspector Rabbit :) I bet that Rabbit has different connotations in Portugal than here and I'd've loved to know what they are. Come to think of it, this book's treatment of the past coming back to haunt the present is very reminiscent of the Arkady Renko series, too. It has a lot in common with Wolves Eat Dogs. It's not as easy of a read, though, and I had to keep flipping back to figure out which character whose name has Olive in in we were talking about, especially the women- there was nothing to make one stand out from another.
In fact, what made it less than 4 starts for me was the author's treatment of women. I am SO TIRED of women's roles being strictly, passively, 2 dimensionally Victim, and in general existing merely to motivate men to behave violently.
I can't help but wonder- is this what it's like for Jews to read about WWII? They are always portrayed as passive victims, when really they were fighting back at every step. That part never seems to make it into the movies. You read enough of these books and you get to thinking it might be time to just get rid of men. Fortunately some of my best friends are men, so I know better. But still, authors, up your game! please!
May 27, 2016
O início da leitura deste livro foi uma luta. Aquilo que parecia, nos primeiros capítulos, uma história chata transformou-se e acabou por me agarrar literalmente ao livro.
O trabalho de pesquisa que o autor apresenta é surpreendente.
Lisboa / Portugal – Anos 40 - Verificamos ao longo do livro que não se limitou a pesquisar sobre Lisboa, mas também sobre o Portugal profundo, seus costumes, tradições e produtos tradicionais. Descreve bem a sociedade e a classe política da época. Mostra-nos o posicionamento de Portugal na 2º Grande Guerra Mundical e a forma como Salazar quis e conseguiu dar-se com “Deus e o Diabo”. A febre do “Ouro Negro”, o seu comércio/contrabando a troco de toneladas de ouro era algo de que tinha pouco conhecimento.
Lisboa / Linha de Cascais – Anos 90 – Embora seja uma época mais recente (há data que leio este livro já lá vão 17 anos) a forma como descreve a cidade de Lisboa e arredores, a juventude e a sociedade em geral está muito bem conseguida.
Em ambas as épocas, o trabalho de caracterização dos portugueses é notável. Uma sociedade com muita gente mesquinha, invejosa, gananciosa, traidora, corrupta e outros adjectivos não muito abonatórios.
As personagens estão bastante bem conseguidas, mas destaco Klaus Felsen, que me pareceu mais trabalhado que o Zé Coelho.
Uma das coisas interessantes neste livro é que à medida que os capítulos avançam o espaço temporal diminui e percebemos que existe uma ligação entre os anos 40 e os anos 90.
Achei a reviravolta final um pouco exagerada.
Um romance policial que qualquer um pode ler, com muita história e que apenas tem que fazer o esforço de passar as primeiras páginas.
O trabalho de pesquisa que o autor apresenta é surpreendente.
Lisboa / Portugal – Anos 40 - Verificamos ao longo do livro que não se limitou a pesquisar sobre Lisboa, mas também sobre o Portugal profundo, seus costumes, tradições e produtos tradicionais. Descreve bem a sociedade e a classe política da época. Mostra-nos o posicionamento de Portugal na 2º Grande Guerra Mundical e a forma como Salazar quis e conseguiu dar-se com “Deus e o Diabo”. A febre do “Ouro Negro”, o seu comércio/contrabando a troco de toneladas de ouro era algo de que tinha pouco conhecimento.
Lisboa / Linha de Cascais – Anos 90 – Embora seja uma época mais recente (há data que leio este livro já lá vão 17 anos) a forma como descreve a cidade de Lisboa e arredores, a juventude e a sociedade em geral está muito bem conseguida.
Em ambas as épocas, o trabalho de caracterização dos portugueses é notável. Uma sociedade com muita gente mesquinha, invejosa, gananciosa, traidora, corrupta e outros adjectivos não muito abonatórios.
As personagens estão bastante bem conseguidas, mas destaco Klaus Felsen, que me pareceu mais trabalhado que o Zé Coelho.
Uma das coisas interessantes neste livro é que à medida que os capítulos avançam o espaço temporal diminui e percebemos que existe uma ligação entre os anos 40 e os anos 90.
Achei a reviravolta final um pouco exagerada.
Um romance policial que qualquer um pode ler, com muita história e que apenas tem que fazer o esforço de passar as primeiras páginas.
July 22, 2020
Two books for the price of 1 here - and not the fact that its in two parts.
We start in the WWII, with a German Businessman in Berlin who is forced to use his language/business skills to join the SS and arrange for the export of Tungsten (a core component in canon shells) from neutral Portugal, who are also doing business with the British.
After a couple of chapters of this - we move to the late 90s - and a police procedural told from the detectives perspective, after a young girl is found murdered on a beach.
Part I is superbly done - we go back and forth between the two stories - building up to great stories. At this point, it was 5 points all the way. Pages couldn't turn themselves quick enough.
Then Part II starts and we move through the historical decades very quickly - mainly so the two stories can co-join. Although authentic and meticulously researched, the modern section suffers from its own ambitions as it tries to explain Modern Portugal, how it has been built on Nazi Gold and the revolution that happened in the 70s.
The two stories do come together but not really in a very credible way and the many characters are hard to keep on top off. Sex is a major factor in the young girls life in the modern story and the way the author details it becomes repetitive, deliberately scandalous and not really very authentic.
The grand reveal, even less so.
Shame, as it really peters out from such a promising beginning.
On reflection, I enjoyed A company of Strangers more than this one. It won't stop me moving onto one of the series books he has written - probably the Javier Falcon novels. I like Seville.
We start in the WWII, with a German Businessman in Berlin who is forced to use his language/business skills to join the SS and arrange for the export of Tungsten (a core component in canon shells) from neutral Portugal, who are also doing business with the British.
After a couple of chapters of this - we move to the late 90s - and a police procedural told from the detectives perspective, after a young girl is found murdered on a beach.
Part I is superbly done - we go back and forth between the two stories - building up to great stories. At this point, it was 5 points all the way. Pages couldn't turn themselves quick enough.
Then Part II starts and we move through the historical decades very quickly - mainly so the two stories can co-join. Although authentic and meticulously researched, the modern section suffers from its own ambitions as it tries to explain Modern Portugal, how it has been built on Nazi Gold and the revolution that happened in the 70s.
The two stories do come together but not really in a very credible way and the many characters are hard to keep on top off. Sex is a major factor in the young girls life in the modern story and the way the author details it becomes repetitive, deliberately scandalous and not really very authentic.
The grand reveal, even less so.
Shame, as it really peters out from such a promising beginning.
On reflection, I enjoyed A company of Strangers more than this one. It won't stop me moving onto one of the series books he has written - probably the Javier Falcon novels. I like Seville.
July 10, 2016
Portugal é o palco central de ambas as histórias contadas por Robert Wilson: a investigação de um homicídio com contornos sexuais de uma rapariga de 15 anos em 1998 e uma saga sangrenta e complexa que começa durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial em 1941.
Ambas as narrativas se apresentam, ora uma ora outra, inicialmente, sem qualquer relação, mas os caminhos das suas fascinantes personagens estão destinados a cruzar-se.
Duas histórias, três narradores principais. Klaus Felsen é um homem de negócios ambicioso que se rodeia constantemente de mulheres e é convencido pela Gestapo a trabalhar em Portugal. É ele que nos introduz neste enredo. Segue-se José Coelho, um detective de meia idade, viúvo com perspicácia e sentido de humor que vive com a filha adolescente de 16 anos. Por fim, Manuel Abrantes, o narrador mais perigoso e sombrio desta história
Robert Wilson descreve friamente a sociedade portuguesa, enquanto o nosso detective investiga o homicídio da filha promíscua de um poderoso advogado. Os capítulos vão-se alternado, tal como os narradores, até que o elo de ligação é revelado.
Tudo isto e um mistério rodeado de suspense até à última página.
Que mais poderemos pedir num policial, que se passa no nosso país?
Ambas as narrativas se apresentam, ora uma ora outra, inicialmente, sem qualquer relação, mas os caminhos das suas fascinantes personagens estão destinados a cruzar-se.
Duas histórias, três narradores principais. Klaus Felsen é um homem de negócios ambicioso que se rodeia constantemente de mulheres e é convencido pela Gestapo a trabalhar em Portugal. É ele que nos introduz neste enredo. Segue-se José Coelho, um detective de meia idade, viúvo com perspicácia e sentido de humor que vive com a filha adolescente de 16 anos. Por fim, Manuel Abrantes, o narrador mais perigoso e sombrio desta história
Robert Wilson descreve friamente a sociedade portuguesa, enquanto o nosso detective investiga o homicídio da filha promíscua de um poderoso advogado. Os capítulos vão-se alternado, tal como os narradores, até que o elo de ligação é revelado.
Tudo isto e um mistério rodeado de suspense até à última página.
Que mais poderemos pedir num policial, que se passa no nosso país?
July 30, 2010
I feel this book started off a little slowly, but I ended up really enjoying the ride. The fact that it stitched together two periods in time is what first called my attention to it (mostly the WWII-era story), and I have to say that I think the challenge was well-handled by the author. There was a lot more character depth and backstory than I expected from a "crime novel" (a genre largely out of my area of interest), but then, maybe that's not really what it was.
October 28, 2012
This is more gritty than what I normally read with a lot more sex than I prefer but to the author's credit it was all part of the plot and not simply gratuitous. The span of Portugal from World War II and the modern murder and the integration of the two timelines was masterful and kept me reading fascinated to see how it would come together.
April 23, 2015
I can't say I liked this book, exactly. I hovered over three stars for a while near the end, tiring of the 400-page immersion in the world of despicable people and their overly-described full range of bodily functions. Nevertheless, I had to bump the rating back up to four stars when I sat down to glance at the first lines of a chapter before making dinner, and, hours later, having been unable to set it back down, closed the completed book.
Wilson's writing is undeniably skillful. All the loose ends tie up neatly, to the point where I spent chunks of the final chapters flipping back to earlier sections to remind myself of when characters were introduced or how I'd responded to pivotal moments that had initially seemed to be incidental filler text. It's certainly a satisfying crime/mystery novel in that way. The historical context was also fascinating, since I don't know a lot of that side of the war.
Avoiding spoilers as much as possible, I can only say that I'm not certain I bought some of those last few twists. It was almost TOO neat by the end, with essentially every character who was introduced having some key connection to the central murder. It's a fairly bleak portrait of humanity, with minimal sparks of hope. I need to take a break from this type of book and read something more uplifting to remind myself that all humans aren't monsters and that all men don't take out their aggression and thwarted pride on those around them - particularly women.
Wilson's writing is undeniably skillful. All the loose ends tie up neatly, to the point where I spent chunks of the final chapters flipping back to earlier sections to remind myself of when characters were introduced or how I'd responded to pivotal moments that had initially seemed to be incidental filler text. It's certainly a satisfying crime/mystery novel in that way. The historical context was also fascinating, since I don't know a lot of that side of the war.
Avoiding spoilers as much as possible, I can only say that I'm not certain I bought some of those last few twists. It was almost TOO neat by the end, with essentially every character who was introduced having some key connection to the central murder. It's a fairly bleak portrait of humanity, with minimal sparks of hope. I need to take a break from this type of book and read something more uplifting to remind myself that all humans aren't monsters and that all men don't take out their aggression and thwarted pride on those around them - particularly women.
June 19, 2013
Real real spoilers here, namely a plot detail over which I *must* rant.
First thing: the author gets exactly right some details about Portugal, namely food and geography. He is totally right about menus and what people eat in restaurants, or the noise the bridge does, or what the neighborhoods look like. I could see it, he was there, that is what Portugal looks like. But he does not get what Portugal thinks or how it works. The way he presents motivations and relations (nevermind how the portuguese judicial system works) was very unconvincing, not to say plain wrong.
The detail over which I must rant: eye color genetics are not like that at all, or at least as I learned. Two brown eyed parents can both carry a recessive lighter eye gene and have a blue or green eyed child. It´s the other way around which is impossible, two pale eyed parents can not have a dark eyed child. At least that is what I learned in high school and a short check of wikipedia points that while it is complicated, the facts seem to be basically like that and the plot point the author uses complete nonsense. I feel cheated in a mystery novel, to have a very important plot point be impossible.
First thing: the author gets exactly right some details about Portugal, namely food and geography. He is totally right about menus and what people eat in restaurants, or the noise the bridge does, or what the neighborhoods look like. I could see it, he was there, that is what Portugal looks like. But he does not get what Portugal thinks or how it works. The way he presents motivations and relations (nevermind how the portuguese judicial system works) was very unconvincing, not to say plain wrong.
The detail over which I must rant: eye color genetics are not like that at all, or at least as I learned. Two brown eyed parents can both carry a recessive lighter eye gene and have a blue or green eyed child. It´s the other way around which is impossible, two pale eyed parents can not have a dark eyed child. At least that is what I learned in high school and a short check of wikipedia points that while it is complicated, the facts seem to be basically like that and the plot point the author uses complete nonsense. I feel cheated in a mystery novel, to have a very important plot point be impossible.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 16, 2016
One of the main factors in my buying this book was my Portugalphilia. I've forgotten what it was all about and I can't find my book, but I remembered it was an enjoyable (albeit a tad too long?) read.
December 21, 2017
Due to amount of uni study, it took time to finish, also the number the pages did contribute to take awhile reading. I really loved it reading, easy to read and isvalways good the author choose major part of the story in my country. yay ! I recommend it, its a classic in my opinion. :-)
November 17, 2013
A Small Death in Lisbon by Robert Wilson won the 1999 Gold Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel. It is a complex parallel story set in WWII and in 1999, in Berlin and Lisbon. It begins with Nazis coercing Swabian businessman Klaus Felsen into leaving Berlin to procure wolfram for them (by any means) in Portugal.
“At dawn the heavy black curtains were crushing the iron-grey light back outside. The white linen bedclothes were stiff with cold. Felsen's head came off the pillow at the second crash, which came with the noise of a length of wood splintering. Boots thundered over wooden floors, something fell and rolled. Felsen turned, his shoulders hardened by the frost, his brain grinding through the gears, drink and tiredness confusing the double declutch required. The room shattered. Two men in calf-length black leather coats stepped through the door frames. Felsen's single thought – why didn't they just open the doors?”
Felsen at first seems like he might be a sympathetic protagonist, as he and his lover Eva are bullied by the Nazis, but as time passes he shows equal cruelty and brutality (likewise his partner and his son). It’s difficult to read the senseless violence, including torture of men and women. Felsen’s story spans the decades from WWII to 1999.
An event that strains credulity is Felsen waiting in ambush to kill an accomplice in wolfram mining who has double-crossed him, but ending up partners with him. They are equally cruel, brutal men; both trick the other, even though they must wait decades for full revenge. As the war progresses into Russia, Felsen’s superior officer begins to plot an escape route with Felsen, in case the Nazis lose. Felsen takes his revenge a decade later for the early violence in Berlin.
Felsen buys a fantastic house, and briefly enjoys it with a former girlfriend:
“They spent the time driving out to his house, the westernmost house on mainland Europe-only heather, gorse, the cliffs and the lighthouse at Cabo da Roca between it and the ocean...they sat in the enclosed terrace on the roof and drank brandy and watched the storms out at sea, the deranged clouds and the blood-orange sunsets...they renamed the house Cas ao Fim do Mundo-House at the End of the World.”
Inspector Zé Coelho is on the Lisbon police force in 1999, investigating the murder of a sixteen-year-old girl named Catarina Oliveira. We learn right away that he is a widower of one year, living with his sixteen-year-old daughter Olivia, but we don’t learn much more about Zé for a few hundred pages. His investigation proceeds slowly, with interviews of the victim’s parents and friends (rather dull). He and his partner Carlos have frequent dialogues about Portugal’s history and politics. [Rereading the first chapters, I see major players are introduced, but I sure didn’t recognize it the first time.]
Readers familiar with Lisbon and surrounding areas will enjoy the author’s descriptive details and obvious affection for Portugal:
“I walked down the harbor wall to the sea. It was barely 7.15 a.m. and the sun already had some needle in it. To my left, looking east, was the mouth of the Tagus and the massive pillars of the 25th April suspension bridge which floated footless in a heavy mist. With the sun higher the sea wasn't so much blue any more as a panel-beaten silver sheet. Small fishing boats, moored off the beach, rocked on the dazzling surface in the morning's breeze. A passenger jet came in low above the river and banked over the cement works and beaches of Caparica south of the Tagus to make its approach into the airport north of the city--tourists arriving for golf and days in the sun. Further west and out to sea, a tugboat pulled a dredger alongside the Búgio lighthouse, Lisbon's scaled-down, antique Alcatraz. At the end of the wall a fisherman reached back with his rod, took two steps and sent his hook out into the ocean with a violent whip of his shoulders and flick of his wrists.”
Settings are painstakingly described with a touch of dry humor:
“We were shown into the sitting room which, judging by the furnishings, was not Dr Oliveira's side of the house. There was natural light in the room, fancy ceramics and no dark corners of books. The art on the walls was the sort that demanded comment unless you happened to be a police inspector from Lisbon in which case your opinion didn't matter. I took a seat on one of the two caramel leather sofas. Above the fireplace was a portrait of a skeletal figure in an armchair as seen through lashes of paint. It was disturbing. You had to be disturbed to live with it....There were plants in the room and an arrangement of lilies but just as the eye relaxed it came across a dark metal figure scrabbling out of the primordial slime or a terracotta head, open-mouthed, screaming at the ceiling. The safest place to look was the floor which was parquet with Persian rugs.”
Zé has distinct opinions about wealth and status:
“Teresa Carvalho, the keyboards player, lived with her parents in an apartment building in Telheiras, which is not far from Odivelas on the map, but a steep climb on the money ladder. This is where you come when your first cream has risen to the top of your milk. Insulated buildings, pastel shades, security systems, garage parking, satellite dishes, tennis clubs, ten minutes from the airport, five minutes from either football stadium and Colombo. It's wired up but dead out here, like pacing through a cemetery of perfect mausoleums.”
Zé defines the Portuguese soul:
“You know why Lisbon's a sad place. It's never recovered from its history. Something terrible happened here which marked the place for ever. All those shaded, narrow alleyways, the dark gardens, the cypresses around the cemeteries, the steep cobbled streets, the black and white calçada in the squares, the views out over the red roofs to the slow river and the ocean...they're never shrugged off the fact that almost the entire population of the city was wiped out in an earthquake that happened nearly 250 years ago...The Igreja do Carmo. Can you think of anywhere else in the world where they've left the skeleton of a cathedral in the heart of the city as a monument to all those that died?”
Felsen rapes, beats, tortures and kills his way along the years, becoming tremendously successful. He and his Portuguese partner establish a bank to hide Nazi gold. On page 281 is the very first connection between the parallel plots: the lawyer drawing up the bank documents has the surname Oliveira.
¾ of the way through the book, Zé is suddenly forced to really communicate with his daughter. He shares how he feels about losing his wife/her mother:
“Loss is like a shrapnel wound where the piece of metal's got stuck in a place where the surgeons daren't go, so they decide to leave it. It's painful at first, horribly painful, so that you wonder whether you can live with it. But then the body grows around it, until it doesn't hurt any more. Not like it used to. But every now and again there are these twinges when you're not ready for them, and you realize it's still there and it's always going to be there. It's a part of you. A still, hard point inside.”
About page 330, Zé’s investigation begins to link to the Felsen plot. His breakthrough comes on page 377: “Then your daughter also made this man’s tie”. By page 404, the murder mystery seems to be solved, and the reader may wonder why there are 40 pages left (I did). But if nothing else, this lengthy saga is a lesson in violent treachery and betrayal, and the plot twists and turns to reveal more of the same right up to the end.
“At dawn the heavy black curtains were crushing the iron-grey light back outside. The white linen bedclothes were stiff with cold. Felsen's head came off the pillow at the second crash, which came with the noise of a length of wood splintering. Boots thundered over wooden floors, something fell and rolled. Felsen turned, his shoulders hardened by the frost, his brain grinding through the gears, drink and tiredness confusing the double declutch required. The room shattered. Two men in calf-length black leather coats stepped through the door frames. Felsen's single thought – why didn't they just open the doors?”
Felsen at first seems like he might be a sympathetic protagonist, as he and his lover Eva are bullied by the Nazis, but as time passes he shows equal cruelty and brutality (likewise his partner and his son). It’s difficult to read the senseless violence, including torture of men and women. Felsen’s story spans the decades from WWII to 1999.
An event that strains credulity is Felsen waiting in ambush to kill an accomplice in wolfram mining who has double-crossed him, but ending up partners with him. They are equally cruel, brutal men; both trick the other, even though they must wait decades for full revenge. As the war progresses into Russia, Felsen’s superior officer begins to plot an escape route with Felsen, in case the Nazis lose. Felsen takes his revenge a decade later for the early violence in Berlin.
Felsen buys a fantastic house, and briefly enjoys it with a former girlfriend:
“They spent the time driving out to his house, the westernmost house on mainland Europe-only heather, gorse, the cliffs and the lighthouse at Cabo da Roca between it and the ocean...they sat in the enclosed terrace on the roof and drank brandy and watched the storms out at sea, the deranged clouds and the blood-orange sunsets...they renamed the house Cas ao Fim do Mundo-House at the End of the World.”
Inspector Zé Coelho is on the Lisbon police force in 1999, investigating the murder of a sixteen-year-old girl named Catarina Oliveira. We learn right away that he is a widower of one year, living with his sixteen-year-old daughter Olivia, but we don’t learn much more about Zé for a few hundred pages. His investigation proceeds slowly, with interviews of the victim’s parents and friends (rather dull). He and his partner Carlos have frequent dialogues about Portugal’s history and politics. [Rereading the first chapters, I see major players are introduced, but I sure didn’t recognize it the first time.]
Readers familiar with Lisbon and surrounding areas will enjoy the author’s descriptive details and obvious affection for Portugal:
“I walked down the harbor wall to the sea. It was barely 7.15 a.m. and the sun already had some needle in it. To my left, looking east, was the mouth of the Tagus and the massive pillars of the 25th April suspension bridge which floated footless in a heavy mist. With the sun higher the sea wasn't so much blue any more as a panel-beaten silver sheet. Small fishing boats, moored off the beach, rocked on the dazzling surface in the morning's breeze. A passenger jet came in low above the river and banked over the cement works and beaches of Caparica south of the Tagus to make its approach into the airport north of the city--tourists arriving for golf and days in the sun. Further west and out to sea, a tugboat pulled a dredger alongside the Búgio lighthouse, Lisbon's scaled-down, antique Alcatraz. At the end of the wall a fisherman reached back with his rod, took two steps and sent his hook out into the ocean with a violent whip of his shoulders and flick of his wrists.”
Settings are painstakingly described with a touch of dry humor:
“We were shown into the sitting room which, judging by the furnishings, was not Dr Oliveira's side of the house. There was natural light in the room, fancy ceramics and no dark corners of books. The art on the walls was the sort that demanded comment unless you happened to be a police inspector from Lisbon in which case your opinion didn't matter. I took a seat on one of the two caramel leather sofas. Above the fireplace was a portrait of a skeletal figure in an armchair as seen through lashes of paint. It was disturbing. You had to be disturbed to live with it....There were plants in the room and an arrangement of lilies but just as the eye relaxed it came across a dark metal figure scrabbling out of the primordial slime or a terracotta head, open-mouthed, screaming at the ceiling. The safest place to look was the floor which was parquet with Persian rugs.”
Zé has distinct opinions about wealth and status:
“Teresa Carvalho, the keyboards player, lived with her parents in an apartment building in Telheiras, which is not far from Odivelas on the map, but a steep climb on the money ladder. This is where you come when your first cream has risen to the top of your milk. Insulated buildings, pastel shades, security systems, garage parking, satellite dishes, tennis clubs, ten minutes from the airport, five minutes from either football stadium and Colombo. It's wired up but dead out here, like pacing through a cemetery of perfect mausoleums.”
Zé defines the Portuguese soul:
“You know why Lisbon's a sad place. It's never recovered from its history. Something terrible happened here which marked the place for ever. All those shaded, narrow alleyways, the dark gardens, the cypresses around the cemeteries, the steep cobbled streets, the black and white calçada in the squares, the views out over the red roofs to the slow river and the ocean...they're never shrugged off the fact that almost the entire population of the city was wiped out in an earthquake that happened nearly 250 years ago...The Igreja do Carmo. Can you think of anywhere else in the world where they've left the skeleton of a cathedral in the heart of the city as a monument to all those that died?”
Felsen rapes, beats, tortures and kills his way along the years, becoming tremendously successful. He and his Portuguese partner establish a bank to hide Nazi gold. On page 281 is the very first connection between the parallel plots: the lawyer drawing up the bank documents has the surname Oliveira.
¾ of the way through the book, Zé is suddenly forced to really communicate with his daughter. He shares how he feels about losing his wife/her mother:
“Loss is like a shrapnel wound where the piece of metal's got stuck in a place where the surgeons daren't go, so they decide to leave it. It's painful at first, horribly painful, so that you wonder whether you can live with it. But then the body grows around it, until it doesn't hurt any more. Not like it used to. But every now and again there are these twinges when you're not ready for them, and you realize it's still there and it's always going to be there. It's a part of you. A still, hard point inside.”
About page 330, Zé’s investigation begins to link to the Felsen plot. His breakthrough comes on page 377: “Then your daughter also made this man’s tie”. By page 404, the murder mystery seems to be solved, and the reader may wonder why there are 40 pages left (I did). But if nothing else, this lengthy saga is a lesson in violent treachery and betrayal, and the plot twists and turns to reveal more of the same right up to the end.
September 10, 2013
I knew nothing about Portuguese history in the 2nd half of the 20th century before I began this book, and I learnt a lot. I also learnt what wolfram is! However, if as a reade, you're a little nervous of lots of 'foreign' names, then beware, this book is bursting with characters, mostly of German and Porguguese originn with names that frighten...but the names are not half as frightening as the personalities, which are brutal, grasping, ammoral and egocentric. Above this, shines Ze (joe in English) Coehlo, the detective looking into the recent death of a schoolgirl. As we read his 1st person account of his investigation, we are subjected to the 3rd person narrative of the story of Felsen, an SS officer, who moves through WWII and its aftermath as the perpetrator and observer of all sorts of darkness and evil. The NY Times describes it as…a historically sprawling, richly distilled thriller…I'd agree with that wholeheartedly.The book is long, complex, involved and passionate and an extremely difficult read if you're not too keen on the most base instincts of humanity; through the long history we experience torture, rape, murder and paedophilia. No one seems to emerge unscathed - even Ze has faults he finds it hard to control. I was beginning to sink below the ink-black waves when suddenly, right at the end, is the best twist ever. A very dark book with a very scary end.
May 7, 2017
Portugal, 1940s and 1990s. Wilson is a UK-born author of which I don't think I've seen many books here in US (in fact also the copy I read was bought in Ireland).
Nice amount of details in the descriptions in the story, and it keeps you wondering what happened. The history parts of the story, from 1940s to 1990s, only bind to the story in the end, when it seems to be resolved. Enough action and enough interesting characters too. I'd say 8 to 8 1/2 stars out of 10, but the location being in Portugal and the story having enough details (not just words or descriptions of how things look, but how they smell and how the Portuguese general attitude to something is etc) will make it a nice solid 9. I was hoping it to be enough action of the other Robert (Ludlum that is.. as opposed to the ones where it's just talk), and with some regional variations and characters (like Salvo Montalbano would be for Sicily), and this had both.
A few quick notes for future (as the book is probably in US still after us); the measurements in the book are metric.
200 escudos, if I remember correctly, was about $ 1 (or 1000 esc = $ 5)/
20 C degrees = about 70 F, 35 C = about 90 F.
Nice amount of details in the descriptions in the story, and it keeps you wondering what happened. The history parts of the story, from 1940s to 1990s, only bind to the story in the end, when it seems to be resolved. Enough action and enough interesting characters too. I'd say 8 to 8 1/2 stars out of 10, but the location being in Portugal and the story having enough details (not just words or descriptions of how things look, but how they smell and how the Portuguese general attitude to something is etc) will make it a nice solid 9. I was hoping it to be enough action of the other Robert (Ludlum that is.. as opposed to the ones where it's just talk), and with some regional variations and characters (like Salvo Montalbano would be for Sicily), and this had both.
A few quick notes for future (as the book is probably in US still after us); the measurements in the book are metric.
200 escudos, if I remember correctly, was about $ 1 (or 1000 esc = $ 5)/
20 C degrees = about 70 F, 35 C = about 90 F.
June 2, 2008
I had a hard time pushing through to the end of this book, but I just could not give up on it because I had to see how the two story lines tied together in the end. How were the lives of 2 Nazi Germans going to tie into the murder of a young girl in Lisbon in the 1990's? One of the highlights of the book was the modern day detective character. I struggled somewhat with the political activities that were referred to since I have a very limited knowledge of Portugal's history. This book definitely deals with the darker side of humanity, but some of the twists and interconnections the author makes are quite interesting.
August 7, 2016
The plot of this crime novel is complex and ingenious and I admired the way the strands connected. There is a level of sex and violence which is a little uncomfortable for a reader without a strong stomach, but it is not gratuitous. The unfamiliarity of the Portuguese political setting was a bonus as I had little idea of the details of Nazi collaboration.
February 20, 2016
En förstklassig deckare och en mycket bra bok! Jag är helt såld på berättarstilen, de fantastiska personskildringarna, själva handlingen, de mysiga lisbonmiljöerna, ja, nästan på allt. Men boken faller lite på slutet och därför en fyra.
July 25, 2013
A well structured plot. It has enough events going on, without making it dull.
It's an interesting book, well written. The perfect summer book.
It's an interesting book, well written. The perfect summer book.
June 17, 2019
Not my cup of tea at all. I read it all but then wondered why I had wasted my time.
August 2, 2021
This is a 1999 book by British crime mystery author Robert Wilson. This book was the winner of the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award in 1999. It is in a way a historic mystery that covers many significant historic subjects such as how Nazi Germany secured raw materials in World War II in neutral countries, the role of Portugal as well as tungsten in World War II, how civilian and refugee lives were like in wartime Germany, Nazi treatment of Jews, how the Nazi regime smuggled Nazi looted gold out of Europe to Brazil and other places after the end of WWII, the Salazar dictatorship and the secret police PIDE in Portugal, as well at the 1974 Carnation Revolution in Portugal. The book is structured as two sub-stories that in the end merged into one long epic tale. Wilson split the book into many short chapters and have portions of the two subplots criss-cross each other. It is a very effective structure given the two parallel story lines. The first story covers a five-month period in 1998 and is about the murder of a 16-year girl called Catarina Sousa Oliveira in Lisbon, Portugal. The second story is an epic tale that started in 1941 and goes all the way to 1998. The setting of the first story is from June to November 1998 and is mainly in Lisbon and its surrounding areas. The setting of the second story is mainly during World War II in Germany and Portugal, and then it goes through various decades all the way to 1998 as Wilson tells us how various players and their families progress since the end of the war.
Spoiler Alert. The protagonist in the book is homicide Inspector Jose Afonso Coelho of the Lisbon police (called Ze by his friends). The first story (the 1998 murder) is told from the first-person point of view of Coelho and how he investigated the murder. The second story tells the saga from the beginning. The second story starts in 1941 in Berlin, Germany with Klaus Felsen, a successful businessman with very good business skills, being forced to join the German SS and was sent to Portugal to outsmart the English competitors to secure tungsten supply for Germany, which was an important ingredient in making ammunitions. In the process, Felsen worked closely with Joaquim Abrantes, the local political head of the very poor Beira region (which has a lot of tungsten). Felsen, who was a sexual predator, raped Abrantes’ unofficial wife Maria Abrantes while Jaoquim was away. Later, Maria gave birth to a child Manuel Abrantes but it was not until years later that she confessed to Jaoquim that Manuel was not his son. As the war goes on, and it finally became obvious that Germany may lose, Felsen, together with his SS commander Oswald Lehrer and Joaquim, decided to set up a Portuguese bank called Banco de Oceano e Rocha with the three of them as directors but with Jaoquim having majority control because he is a Portuguese national. They correctly predicted that once Germany lost the war, all German assets in Portugal will be seized. They then hid all their ill-gotten gains into the bank. At the end of the war, in May 1945, Lehrer, together with a few SS officers fleeing Germany, stole a lot of Nazi looted gold and moved them to Portugal, planning to go from there to Brazil with Felsen’s help. Felsen and Abrantes, however, double-crossed them. They killed Lehrer and the other SS men and stole their gold and put them in the bank. The only one who escaped was a man called Schmidt.
After the war, Felsen and Abrantes prospered in Portugal and became very rich bankers and real estate developers in the post-war boom. In 1955, however, Maria Abrantes had a big fight with Jaoquim when he decided to desert her to marry an actress. Out of spite, Maria told Jaoquim Felsen raped her years ago and Felsen was the father of Manuel. Jaoquim never let on to Felsen Maria has told him. In 1961, Schmidt, the SS man who escaped the double-cross by Felsen and Joaquim, went to Felsen’s home to confront him. In an accident, Schmidt died from a gunshot wound from Felsen’s gun. Jaoquim took the opportunity to take revenge on Felsen and using his political influence, got Felsen arrested and convicted of Schmidt’s murder with Felsen was sentenced to a 20-year jail term. In early 1960s, Manuel Abrantes was a rising star in the notorious Portuguese secret police PIDE under the Salazar dictator regime. He was very brutal when interrogating political prisoners. In 1965, he raped and tortured to death a pregnant political prisoner Maria Antonia Medinas and her unborn son. In April 1974, Portugal had the Carnation Revolution, and the Salazar regime was overthrown. Manuel fled the country and in 1980 he came back to Lisbon with a new identify as Miguel da Costa Rodrigues. After both his father Jaoquim and subsequently his brother Pedro died in 1982, Miguel took over the bank (which has now grown to become one of the biggest banks in Portugal). Miguel, like his real father Felsen, is also a sexual predator and often uses prostitutes and is into rape as well. In 1982, Miguel’s lawyer Dr Aquiliano Dias Oliveira sent his fiancé and secretary Teresa to deliver some documents to Miguel. Miguel raped her that day and she became pregnant. After she was married to Aquiliano, she gave birth to Catarina Sousa Oliveira (the murder victim of 1999). By 1990s, as Miguel has got older, he got into voyeurism. His old PIDE buddy Jorge owns a cheap hotel for sex called Pensao Nuno. Every Friday Miguel would go to his hotel which has a special room with a two-way mirror to allow Miguel to watch the sex scenes next door.
By 1998, Aquiliano has decided to take revenge on Miguel. He hired a private detective Lourenco Goncalves to follow Miguel around for almost a year to know all his routines. Once he discovered Miguel was into voyeur, he devised a devious scheme to take revenge on everybody (Miguel, his own wife Teresa, and his daughter Catarina). Catarina has a very promiscuous life and is a part-time prostitute. Aquiliano got Goncalves to get Jorge to setup Catarina so that she got seen by Miguel in the hotel room having sex. Miguel, who was into young blondes, did not know Catarina was his daughter. He got obsessed with her. One day, he picked her up, took her to a secluded place, and raped her. After Miguel left her in the woods, another person paid by Goncalves, Antonio Borrego, murdered Catarina. Aquiliano orchestrated the murder and planted evidence so that clothings of Catarina were found in Miguel’s home. At that time, Aquiliano also arranged to have the Nazi gold story and the bank’s involvement in laundering looted Nazi gold came out so public opinion was all against the powerful banker Miguel. Miguel was tried and found guilty of the murder of Catarina and sentenced to life. His bank’s assets were also frozen by the government in connection with its Nazi gold investigation. Coelho became a national hero, both for solving the crime and uncovering the bank’s connection with Nazi looted gold. Coelho, however, was not satisfied. He finally figured out it was a plot by Aquiliano to take revenge on Miguel by using his daughter as bait. Interestingly, Aquiliano’s wife, Teresa, died during the investigation of a drug overdose. Coelho, however, were not able to bring Aquiliano to justice. There was not enough evidence and the whole country was happy with having found Miguel guilty of Catarina’s murder as well as his family bank’s downfall. It is interesting that Wilson created a father and son story that have two generations committing the same crime and ending up with the same poetic justice. Both Felsen and Manual (Miguel) raped someone’s wife or fiancé, got them pregnant, and end up paying for it by being framed for murder by the husband and imprisoned for a long time.
Spoiler Alert. The protagonist in the book is homicide Inspector Jose Afonso Coelho of the Lisbon police (called Ze by his friends). The first story (the 1998 murder) is told from the first-person point of view of Coelho and how he investigated the murder. The second story tells the saga from the beginning. The second story starts in 1941 in Berlin, Germany with Klaus Felsen, a successful businessman with very good business skills, being forced to join the German SS and was sent to Portugal to outsmart the English competitors to secure tungsten supply for Germany, which was an important ingredient in making ammunitions. In the process, Felsen worked closely with Joaquim Abrantes, the local political head of the very poor Beira region (which has a lot of tungsten). Felsen, who was a sexual predator, raped Abrantes’ unofficial wife Maria Abrantes while Jaoquim was away. Later, Maria gave birth to a child Manuel Abrantes but it was not until years later that she confessed to Jaoquim that Manuel was not his son. As the war goes on, and it finally became obvious that Germany may lose, Felsen, together with his SS commander Oswald Lehrer and Joaquim, decided to set up a Portuguese bank called Banco de Oceano e Rocha with the three of them as directors but with Jaoquim having majority control because he is a Portuguese national. They correctly predicted that once Germany lost the war, all German assets in Portugal will be seized. They then hid all their ill-gotten gains into the bank. At the end of the war, in May 1945, Lehrer, together with a few SS officers fleeing Germany, stole a lot of Nazi looted gold and moved them to Portugal, planning to go from there to Brazil with Felsen’s help. Felsen and Abrantes, however, double-crossed them. They killed Lehrer and the other SS men and stole their gold and put them in the bank. The only one who escaped was a man called Schmidt.
After the war, Felsen and Abrantes prospered in Portugal and became very rich bankers and real estate developers in the post-war boom. In 1955, however, Maria Abrantes had a big fight with Jaoquim when he decided to desert her to marry an actress. Out of spite, Maria told Jaoquim Felsen raped her years ago and Felsen was the father of Manuel. Jaoquim never let on to Felsen Maria has told him. In 1961, Schmidt, the SS man who escaped the double-cross by Felsen and Joaquim, went to Felsen’s home to confront him. In an accident, Schmidt died from a gunshot wound from Felsen’s gun. Jaoquim took the opportunity to take revenge on Felsen and using his political influence, got Felsen arrested and convicted of Schmidt’s murder with Felsen was sentenced to a 20-year jail term. In early 1960s, Manuel Abrantes was a rising star in the notorious Portuguese secret police PIDE under the Salazar dictator regime. He was very brutal when interrogating political prisoners. In 1965, he raped and tortured to death a pregnant political prisoner Maria Antonia Medinas and her unborn son. In April 1974, Portugal had the Carnation Revolution, and the Salazar regime was overthrown. Manuel fled the country and in 1980 he came back to Lisbon with a new identify as Miguel da Costa Rodrigues. After both his father Jaoquim and subsequently his brother Pedro died in 1982, Miguel took over the bank (which has now grown to become one of the biggest banks in Portugal). Miguel, like his real father Felsen, is also a sexual predator and often uses prostitutes and is into rape as well. In 1982, Miguel’s lawyer Dr Aquiliano Dias Oliveira sent his fiancé and secretary Teresa to deliver some documents to Miguel. Miguel raped her that day and she became pregnant. After she was married to Aquiliano, she gave birth to Catarina Sousa Oliveira (the murder victim of 1999). By 1990s, as Miguel has got older, he got into voyeurism. His old PIDE buddy Jorge owns a cheap hotel for sex called Pensao Nuno. Every Friday Miguel would go to his hotel which has a special room with a two-way mirror to allow Miguel to watch the sex scenes next door.
By 1998, Aquiliano has decided to take revenge on Miguel. He hired a private detective Lourenco Goncalves to follow Miguel around for almost a year to know all his routines. Once he discovered Miguel was into voyeur, he devised a devious scheme to take revenge on everybody (Miguel, his own wife Teresa, and his daughter Catarina). Catarina has a very promiscuous life and is a part-time prostitute. Aquiliano got Goncalves to get Jorge to setup Catarina so that she got seen by Miguel in the hotel room having sex. Miguel, who was into young blondes, did not know Catarina was his daughter. He got obsessed with her. One day, he picked her up, took her to a secluded place, and raped her. After Miguel left her in the woods, another person paid by Goncalves, Antonio Borrego, murdered Catarina. Aquiliano orchestrated the murder and planted evidence so that clothings of Catarina were found in Miguel’s home. At that time, Aquiliano also arranged to have the Nazi gold story and the bank’s involvement in laundering looted Nazi gold came out so public opinion was all against the powerful banker Miguel. Miguel was tried and found guilty of the murder of Catarina and sentenced to life. His bank’s assets were also frozen by the government in connection with its Nazi gold investigation. Coelho became a national hero, both for solving the crime and uncovering the bank’s connection with Nazi looted gold. Coelho, however, was not satisfied. He finally figured out it was a plot by Aquiliano to take revenge on Miguel by using his daughter as bait. Interestingly, Aquiliano’s wife, Teresa, died during the investigation of a drug overdose. Coelho, however, were not able to bring Aquiliano to justice. There was not enough evidence and the whole country was happy with having found Miguel guilty of Catarina’s murder as well as his family bank’s downfall. It is interesting that Wilson created a father and son story that have two generations committing the same crime and ending up with the same poetic justice. Both Felsen and Manual (Miguel) raped someone’s wife or fiancé, got them pregnant, and end up paying for it by being framed for murder by the husband and imprisoned for a long time.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 25, 2025
An award winning crime novel, this story is told through dual narratives which are set a generation apart.
The first storyline is set in war torn Europe, and is told by the reluctant SS Officer Klaus Felsen. Quite simply (so as not to give a lot of the plot away) we learn how the Nazis used a myriad of improper deals to secretly fund a bank in Portugal.
The second storyline is narrated by Inspector Ze Coelho as he investigates the murder of a young girl whose body appears dumped on a beach in Lisbon in the 1900s. As Coelho is aided by his younger assistant in the investigation, many of the secrets of Lisbon's seedy and secret side are threatened to be exposed.
This is a gritty and at times quite graphically told story. Wilson's characters are expertly imagined and the pace of the narrative carries you along perfectly.
I must admit it took me a while to work out where things were going and how these storylines were going to intersect in the end, but that didn't detract from my enjoyment of the story, and things were drawn together well at the conclusion.
The first storyline is set in war torn Europe, and is told by the reluctant SS Officer Klaus Felsen. Quite simply (so as not to give a lot of the plot away) we learn how the Nazis used a myriad of improper deals to secretly fund a bank in Portugal.
The second storyline is narrated by Inspector Ze Coelho as he investigates the murder of a young girl whose body appears dumped on a beach in Lisbon in the 1900s. As Coelho is aided by his younger assistant in the investigation, many of the secrets of Lisbon's seedy and secret side are threatened to be exposed.
This is a gritty and at times quite graphically told story. Wilson's characters are expertly imagined and the pace of the narrative carries you along perfectly.
I must admit it took me a while to work out where things were going and how these storylines were going to intersect in the end, but that didn't detract from my enjoyment of the story, and things were drawn together well at the conclusion.
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