Nick Sweet’s Murder in Seville is an intriguing and exciting noir crime novel that draws the reader in.

Seville, 1979 (only four years after Franco’s death): Inspector Luis Velasquez is called onto the scene of what seems a brutal homicide: a vet is found dead in his bed, killed with “a sawn-off bull’s horn that had been rammed up his ass.” The homicide is only the beginning of a much more complicated case, involving Spain’s dark history and relationship with fascism and Nazism.

Luis Velasquez is an intriguing character who evolves with the narrative. His history and psychology function as a frame to the crime story. He is a man haunted by the ghost of his father. Luis Velasquez’s past introduces the reader to Spain’s history and the scars left by the dictatorship.

As new homicides accumulate, and his beloved wife Pe is threatened with death if he does not abandon the case, inspector Velasquez battles against time to uncover the culprit. Hints get unveiled by an array of interesting people that inhabit the city of Seville: corrupted toreros, immoral aporados, overseas investors, dealers, unhappy wives, homosexual singers, fascist politicians, TV hosts. The writer skilfully paints these characters within contrasting settings – an old and long-standing institution like La Maestranza, the la mecca of bullfighting, and the noisy streets of the new movida that characterises the post-Franco’s years.

Andrew Pepper, in an essay published in The Cambridge Companion to American Crime Fiction, stated the main characteristics of noir crime stories: “the corrosive effects of money, the meaninglessness and absurdity of existence, anxieties about masculinity and the bureaucratization of public life, a fascination with the grotesque and a flirtation with, and rejection of, Freudian psychoanalysis.” Sweet’s new novel displays all of these characteristics as inspector Velasquez engages with crime and corruption – and his inner demons.

Recommended reading, whether you are off to Spain or not.

Murder in Seville by Nick Sweet is published by Sharpe Books and is out now.