Unlikely characters cross paths in 19th-century Cádiz in the bestselling Spanish novelist's finest book yet
The last thing you need in a walled city under siege is a serial killer on the loose, flaying young women to death. But this is the situation that confronts police comisario Rogelio Tizón during the 1811 siege of Cádiz in Arturo Pérez-Reverte's bold new thriller.
Though the victims appear to be chosen at random, the murders occur at sites where a French bomb has just fallen. Tizón begins to perceive the city as a giant chessboard, as he tries to anticipate his invisible opponent's next move without knowing who is behind the attacks or why.
In the confined atmosphere of the besieged town, unlikely characters cross paths and become entangled in one another's lives: the French professor turned officer; the young heiress who runs her father's shipping company; a taxidermist who works as a spy; and, behind them all, the complex Tizón, trying to decipher the pattern amid the chaos of war and murder.
Fans of Pérez-Reverte, one of Spain's bestselling authors, will recognise familiar themes from previous novels: the fascination with chess, the love of maritime history, the obsession with puzzles and enigmas and the old-fashioned qualities of romance, adventure and intrigue that places his stories firmly in the mould of Dumas and Stevenson.
The Siege is his best yet, in an excellent translation by Frank Wynne: an ambitious intellectual thriller peopled with colourful rogues and antiheroes, meticulous in its historical detail, with a plot that rattles along to its unexpected finale. It's hard to think of a contemporary author who so effortlessly marries popular and literary fiction as enjoyably as this.
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