The Blind Man of Seville: Amazon.de: Robert Wilson: Englische Bücher

Amazon.co.uk

The very title The Blind Man of Seville raises some of the most interesting questions in this original thriller, which breaks the mould of the police procedural far more than seems likely in its seemingly conventional early pages.

A series of men and women are killed by torture and their eye-lids or eyes taken from them in the process--but they die if anything of an excess of sight, of being forced to watch the unendurable. As Inspector Falcon does the legwork of the case, and gets more and more teasing messages about sight and light from the ingenious and vicious killer, we find ourselves wondering whether he himself is the blind man, if there is something he is refusing to see.

At the same time, he is clearing the studio of his dead painter father, and reading journals containing a horribly plausible version of the man he thought he knew--a bisexual gangster who fought for Fascism and the Nazis in Spain and Russia. And around him Seville is having its intense and bizarre Holy Week celebrations, with bullfights and with vast puppets of sacred figures looming around the streets.

This is a book of surreal intensity which plays by all the rules of the detective novel and yet gives the reader so much disturbingly more. --Roz Kaveney -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verf�gbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

Amazon.com

After trying his hand at spy fiction in The Company of Strangers, Robert Wilson returns to his detective-thriller roots with The Blind Man of Seville, a grimly bewitching and character-driven yarn about people confronting their most hidden horrors.

"It was only right that there should be at least one murder in Holy Week," muses Inspector Jefe Javier Falcón as he's called out during Spain's Semana Santa festivities to probe the death of a prosperous Seville restaurateur, Raúl Jiménez. The deceased was found strapped to a chair with his eyelids removed, facing a television on which had been showing a video of him entertaining prostitutes. Jiménez's heart had failed as he struggled to escape. This murder is "more extraordinary than any I have seen in my career," Falcón tells the businessman's widow, as he embarks on an investigation that will lead to the slayings of a hooker and an art dealer, and force the homicide cop into a game of wits against a killer obsessed with the contradictions between illusion and reality. Meanwhile, Falcón is himself obsessed with the long-secreted journals kept by his late father, a famous painter, whose brutal acts during the Spanish Civil War and subsequent hedonism in North Africa shaped Javier's life... and will make him the killer's next target.

Wilson's plot turns rather creakily on the coincidence of Falcón discovering a photograph of his father among Jiménez's things. And lengthy excerpts from the elder Falcón's diaries, while they reveal links between the book's secondary players, and are interesting for their portrayal of wartime Europe and postwar Tangier, nonetheless hobble this story's pace and distract from the modern crimes at its center. Still, there's a poetic edge to this author's prose that makes even his most gruesome or tragic scenes worthy of rereading, and in Javier Falcón--a lonely outsider who shadows his ex-wife and has a perplexing aversion to milk--he creates a police protagonist as satisfyingly and humanly flawed as any since Zé Coelho, from Wilson's outstanding A Small Death in Lisbon. --J. Kingston Pierce -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

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Un jefe andalou 22. Juni 2006

Von Gudrun Raatschen

Format:Taschenbuch

Dies ist einer der ungewöhnlichsten und eindringlichsten Krimis, die ich je gelesen habe. Nach A Small Death in Lisbon ist es mein zweiter Roman von Wilson, und ich bin zwar begeistert, aber nicht völlig von den Socken. Das liegt vor allem daran, daß dieses Buch viel zu dicht ist. Wilson packt viel zu viel hinein, zu viel überflüssige Handlung, zu viele Personen, die am Ende überhaupt nicht mehr relevant sind (zu viele lose Enden!), und auch zu viele Zufälle, die Javier immer weiter auf die richtige Spur bringen. Dies alles nimmt dem fantastisch geschriebenen Buch leider einiges an Intensität - weniger wäre sehr viel mehr gewesen. Was mir aber an diesem Buch sehr gefallen hat, war einmal die Gegenüberstellung der hektischen Ereignisse um Javier, nüchtern wiedergegeben in der 3. Person, und die Tagebucheinträge von Francisco Falcón, die einen förmlich das Öl auf der Leinwand riechen lassen. Außerdem ist dies einer der ganz wenigen Krimis, in denen die historischen Ereignisse nicht wie aus dem Lehrbuch abgeschrieben wirken (siehe Minette Walters) und die Schilderungen aus der Kunstwelt in keiner Weise peinlich oder daneben sind (siehe Dan Brown). Beides klingt absolut authentisch, und ich halte dies für die größte Leistung Wilsons. (Nur schade, daß die Künstler dabei so schlecht wegkommen.) Ob die Sache mit den Augenlidern eine Reminiszenz an den Film von Luis Bunuel ist, kann man nur vermuten - das Unbewußte spielt jedenfalls eine große Rolle, und surreal ist dieser Krimi allemal. Fazit: Große Klasse mit kleinen Abstrichen, daher für Leute mit starken Nerven uneingeschränkt empfehlenswert.

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past and present - they belong together 8. Januar 2006

Von andante VINE™-PRODUKTTESTER

Format:Unbekannter Einband

Wilson tells a very complex – and enjoyable story about a gruesome murder taking place in the picturesque city of Seville. The background of the story that lead up to the murders goes back to the Second World War and involves the detective’s own family background. Since the first victim was a close friend of his father he learns more about his own family than he really cares to. The characters are well developed, the dialogues very good and the reader learns a lot about Spain and Morocco at the end of the war. It is a good story well told and makes curious to read more crime-novels by the same author.

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Third Strong Book Proceed With Caution 19. Januar 2003

Von taking a rest

I have read and commented upon the two previous novels offered to readers by Robert Wilson in The USA, "A Small Death In Lisbon" and "The Company Of Strangers". This third work, "The Blind Man Of Seville", initially left me less pleased than his previous works, and though I have changed my assessment, it is for the moment the least enjoyable of his works that I have read. Other books that have never been released in The United States are set to begin release this summer, so his entire body of work will finally be available to readers here.

Like the two previous books I mention this is also heavily based upon History. If I was rating this book strictly on style and skill I would give it a four star ranking as I have. If rating the book in terms of enjoyable reading, it would just have made three stars, and that is due to several themes I rather not read about in fiction. I also think a writer with the talent of Mr. Wilson can produce books without choosing subjects or subject matter of the type he chose. I know these situations exist and there are plenty of non-fiction books I can read to learn about these horrific actions directed at children. I do not need them when reading fiction. I am not suggesting he was being sensational or puerile, just that the topic left me cold on the book.

Mr. Wilson has several storylines that are entwined throughout the book, and while he resolves them nicely the book seemed a bit busy at times. In his notes he explains that the writing of the book was interrupted and that may explain why this book is less crisp than the previous two I have read. Children play a role in this book, whether as children or scarred adults. The descriptions are extremely graphic and unsettling, as their subject virtually demands they be by definition. However, as I said, the brutalization of children by pederasts is not a subject I would choose for reading a book of fiction

The description of the book is very brief and does not suggest the deviant behavior the book includes. As much as I admire this man's work, and even as I will continue to read his new books, had I known more about the contents of this book, I would likely have passed. Mr. Wilson is a very talented man with a pen, and the material he uses in this book is necessary for the tale he is telling. It is not the type of material that I enjoy in reading fiction. All that said, I look forward to his next book, and I maintained the fourth star because my disliking a facet of a book's subject matter does not mean I should penalize the book in its entirety.

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