A Shortcut to Paradise

It’s perfect tabloid fodder right from the start in this wickedly funny and scathingly brilliant Catalonian crime novel; a trashy novelist is murdered in a grizzly scene lifted straight from her very own award winning novel. Add to the mix a hold up with a toy pistol, an embittered literary failure, and some sloppy police work and you’ve got the wrong man arrested with an unsurprisingly reticent mugger for an alibi.

Cue Borja and Eduard, two slightly dodgy and somewhat accident-prone private detectives. Diving into Barcelona’s shady literary scene at the deep end, they muddle their way through the murder investigation using a method based in equal measure on flattering rich old ladies and crossing their fingers and hoping for the best.

These twin brothers are an improbable detective duo but their blend of level-headedness on the one hand, and wit and improvisation on the other, serves them well in a murder hunt replete with twists, turns and ridiculously coincidental coincidences. Complications aplenty keep us entertained but it is the biting portrayal of the pretentious Catalonian literati that really holds our attention. No one is safe from Solana’s sharp-tongued mockery; the entire Barcelona literary scene is shown in all its pretentious glory. Solana’s prose, on the other hand, is completely lacking in affectation. It is bright, sharp and unfailingly witty, working around a cleverly structured narrative in which each character acts as a temporary protagonist.

In its neat structure, mocking tone, and unpretentious prose, this sequel to A Not So Perfect Crime delivers the perfect comic punch to Catalonia’s literary types.