Crime: Probably to be bracketed in the Mystery/Thriller/Crime sections of most bookshops, Robert Wilson's new novel far surpasses this genre labelling, writes Vincent Banville.
His seventh offering, The Blind Man of Seville, is a big, highly entertaining and thought-provoking book, dealing as it does with themes of obsession, dysfunctional families, paranoia, the thirst for vengeance, and insanity.
Something that a close relation of my own once remarked - "Just because you're related to someone doesn't mean you have to like him or her" - has always stayed in my mind, and Wilson here builds on this premise to the point of constructing a plotline that layers horror upon horror. The inter- connected relationships portrayed all start out promisingly, but soon deteriorate into a frightfulness of Old Testament intensity.
It is Semana Sante (Holy Week) in Seville and homicide inspector Javier Falcon is investigating the ghastly death of one Raul Jimenez, found bound to a chair in his luxurious apartment with, among other abominations, his eyelids cut off. Falcon is a loner who does not get on very well with either his subordinates or his superiors. He has only recently moved back to Seville, where he was born, and he lives in the large, echoing house that belonged to his deceased artist father.
The death of Jimenez, and the further grisly murders of a prostitute and a picture gallery owner (who represented his own father), lead to Falcon having a kind of breakdown, with memories that he had suppressed from his past beginning to emerge to haunt him. These recollections and feelings are exacerbated by his father's journals, which delineate the course of an extraordinary life: leaving home at the age of 16 to join the French Foreign Legion, fighting in the second World War, living a reprobate's life in Tangier and eventually finding fame and fortune as an artist specialising in nudes.
However, Falcon soon realises that parts of the journals are missing, and that it is the murderer who is sending these missing portions back to him. So a game of cat and mouse begins between the disturbed policeman and his even more disturbed antagonist, leading to a confrontation that must inevitably end in violence.
There is, of course, much more in this always engrossing novel than the bare bones of plot that I have outlined. The exotic setting, the true-to-life characters, the psychological perceptions and the interpolated journals of the father impart depth and breadth to a narrative that is as multi-faceted as Restoration drama. It will take a very good novel indeed in 2003 to better The Blind Man of Seville.
Vincent Banville's novel, An End to Flight, was recently reissued by New Island Books
The Blind Man of Seville. By Robert Wilson, HarperCollins, 434pp, £10