Book review – Winter in Madrid

Turns out when you set aside a bit of time for writing the things you mean to write rather than playing Civ, you actually write them. Who knew?

So, I read Winter in Madrid, by C J Sansom. I’m kinda conflicted about it. FYI, spoilers follow.

I don’t know the author. I gather he’s pretty big in the crime genre and this is out of his comfort zone, but when I found the book I’d never heard of him – crime novels aren’t my thing. I picked it up because it was cheap on Kindle, the blurb sounded interesting and for reasons I’ve never worked out I’m a sucker for ‘TIME in PLACE’ type titles.

Seriously, I have NO CLUE why that’s true. But it is.

Anyhow, Winter in Madrid is well-written. Post-civil-war Spain feels like a real place – you can feel the tension on the streets and the desperation of the people. Little details stop Madrid being a backdrop and turn it into a main character.

And God knows this book needs it, because the characterisation is one of main problems. I’m just… not sure there was any.

And it’s irritating, because occasionally one pops up like an actual honest-to-god 3D person.

Tolley with his eagerness and suppressed need for approval from everyone is well-drawn. The spymaster Hillgarth is outwardly friendly but that hides a pragmatic nature.

But these are side characters. The main 4 – Harry, Bernie, Barbara and Sandy – are just flat.

Harry is a Stiff Upper Lip. Sandy is a Bad Man – not only is he suspected of helping Franco, he also tries to control every aspect of his girlfriend’s life. Harry takes a dislike to him because of a general feeling of badness. Barbara is Childhood Issues. She doesn’t just have them, she is them. Bernie is a Communist. They just weren’t human enough to care about.

Also, these characters did things! I think. I don’t really remember. I’m pretty certain cafes were involved.

So that didn’t help. But the bigger problem, I think, is that it’s essentially 500 pages of a shoot-the-shaggy-dog story. The prologue deals with Bernie’s capture at Jarama. Part 1 introduces the hope he might still be alive. Part 2 spends some time actually in the prison camp with him. The end of Part 3 sees him finally rescued, at some personal cost. And then, in the Epilogue, he’s dead for real. Went off to fight the Nazis and got shot on a beach.

And that just made the whole thing seem pointless. Stories can be open-ended, they don’t need to provide a big resolution. Or you can tie everything up in a neat little bow, if you like. But whatever you do, you need to leave me feeling satisfied at the end of it, like there was some reason for telling me this story. With Winter in Madrid, the only reason I can think of is to kill time, and that’s not enough.