Ah, Pepe Carvalho! The secret agent every man
wishes he could be: CIA-trained, communist-inspired and food-loving.
What makes him different from everyone else
isn’t so much his professional skills (Maigret’s got them too), or the gourmet
recipes Montalbán inserts in his novels (Camilleri – and his aptly named
Commissario Montalbano – do an equally good, if not even better, job of that),
or the intriguing plots he has to unravel.
What makes his stories so great is his
entourage: Charo, the prostitute he loves (and from whom he is loved back),
Biscuter, his side-kick, helper and chef, and Bromuro, the shoeshiner/informer
who is terrified of the government’s apparent schemes to put bromide (bromuro
in Spanish) in the Spanish waters to placate the population’s sexual drive.
This is the second book in which the figure of
Pepe Carvalho appears, but it’s the first time we see his entourage, and
because of this it gets the nod as my favourite Carvalho story.
I almost forgot a crucial part. Carvalho
doesn’t use wood for his fireplace: he burns books, something that makes every
reader cringe and probably simultaneously bow in admiration at the boldness of
the gesture.
