Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (1939–2003)

I came to live in Catalonia fifteen years ago. Even before I came, I started to learn the language, history, and culture. And when I arrived I made it my business to watch the news, especially the stories at the end that told me about who the writers, actors, artists, singers, and other cultural figures were.

Manuel Vasquez Montalban was a highly regarded and apparently much loved journalist and writer of noir detective novels. And it wasn't just the Catalans who thought highly of him. Andrea Camilleri thought so highly of Vasquez Montalban that he named his detective after him.

Why this is, I don't know. When I first came here, I read one of his books. At the time I was a member of an online bookgroup and one of the phrases thrown around there when talking about a book one didn't like was to throw it against the wall. I went one step further. The Montalban I was reading annoyed me so much that I threw it out the window.

This one was no better. I read it all the way through because I hoped to find the good that everyone else saw. But I didn't find it. I found a lot of vulgarity, coarse language, half baked social theory, half baked philosophy (instead of plot or character development) and cardboard characters. Evidently the plot never did grab me, nor did the people. I didn't even enjoy being taken around Barcelona, a city I love. Either he made up place names or those names went out when the Catalan language came back in, but there were few places I could identify. But the topping on the cake was the gratuitous and disgusting piece of violence at the very end. I almost threw up. One of the idiot themes throughout the book was Carvalho (our hero) burning his books, one by one, to light his fire. I don't burn books -- not even books this bad. But I don't keep or recommend them either.… (meer)