Carvalho identity problems, by Carlos Zanón

It is well born to be grateful. And pay tribute to one of the greatest of the classic Spanish black genre as Vazquez Montalban is to be very grateful. Carlos Zanón he has set about it with this new novel that recovers the ghosts of Carvalho and those of a society anchored in post-Francoism and relocates them to this other side of lived time: the present.

In the meantime, a multitude of transitions of all kinds that at times seem to have passed through a country and cities such as Madrid and Barcelona, ​​champions of a polarization through which a Carvalho walking is out of tune less than ever. The ideological uprooting of the great character of Vázquez Montalbán, as a result of his last knowledge of the political and social mechanism capable of corrupting everything, fits perfectly into this new millennium. The usual dichotomous representation of this great character, the one that placed him between a good and a bad with which to live according to context, makes us discover how little civic evolution has occurred in a country like ours.

Zanón makes Carvalho speak in the first person, perhaps seeking that closeness to the mythical character that will make those who knew him in a historical context long for him even more, but which also serves to bring him closer to new readers who would never have turned around for this kind of police hero amid the black shadows of society.

The plot advances with that powerful direct voice and in the first person of Carvalho who in a new time begins to find himself more out of place than ever. From his attunement with his former assistant Biscúter there are only frictions and misunderstandings. In his comings and goings between Madrid and Barcelona, ​​he becomes involved in a love affair in which he feels more threatened than in any of his previous cases. It is not surprising that Carvalho looks from time to time for the voice of the writer yearning for answers about his destiny and the causes that have led to such absurdity.

You can now buy the novel Carvalho Identity Problems, the novel by Carlos Zanón, here: