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The Blind Man of Seville

Robert Wilson (1957 - ...)

2003

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The face.
For a dead man it was a face with presence. Like El Greco’s saints whose eyes never left you alone.
Were they following him?

Plot (spoiler alert ):
A series of murders happen in Seville, with many common traces. The victims are forced to view something, with their eye-lids or eyes taken from them. In a way, he killer forces to victims to kill themselves.

Inspector Falcón is in charge of the investigation, trying to find out who’s doing that, what is he showing to the victims, and also finding the relations between the victims.

Parallel to the investigation, Falcón is clearing the studio of his recently deceased father, a famous painter, where he starts reading his old journals. Those journals change his view about his father, who turns out to be a bisexual, paedophile criminal who fought for Fascism and the Nazis in WWII.

With the murders accumulating, the killer contacting him, and the journals showing him unexpected revelations, Falcón realizes he’s not so distant from the victims and the killer. The connections between the victims and his own father in some uncanny situations are more than a coincidence, and the development of the investigation, both for him and the murder, starts getting very personal…

My views:
The book was one of those lucky guesses that happen less than expected. The title doesn’t seem very suggestive, but for some reason it caught my attention. So I read the synopsis. It seemed like an interesting story, but nothing special. But being in a public library, I had nothing to lose, so I borrowed it.

It turned out to be a very interesting read. It starts as what it seems like an ordinary detective story, but it evolves into a disturbing journey, made by a police inspector, finding things about his father that puts him in a very personal connection with the crimes.

The mixing of the “real” story, passed in Seville, and the “flashback” story, through his father’s journals, is very well done. The characters are well explored, the description are very graphic (although, IMO, mixing Spanish terms in the middle of the narrative doesn’t really fit, even if you understand it well) and the story is appealing enough.

One thing I didn’t like that much: the ending. It seems like Wilson had some kind of deadline, and he wrote the last chapters in a hurry… It was a shame that such a well imagined and written story had such a poor ending (just my opinion, of course), but the rest is good enough to make it a book I recommend to most people. And to make me read more of his books.

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