Who murders an elderly professor in his university office – and why?

Book blurb
Norma Forester of the Barcelona police force is handed the case and word from the top is to resolve it as quickly and as quietly as she can.

Set against the backdrop of one of the most vibrant and exciting cities in Europe, Black Storms also highlights the darker side of Barcelona and its past, overshadowed by the bitter Civil War of the 1930s.

The past also touches Norma Forester, the granddaughter of an English International Brigades volunteer who didn’t survive to see his Spanish daughter.

This first novel of Teresa Solana’s is a fast-paced crime story that balances the hunt for a killer with Norma Forester’s colourful and complex personal life. She’s surrounded by her forensic pathologist husband, her hippy mother, and her anarchist squatter daughter whose father is Norma’s husband’s gay brother. Then there are Norma’s police colleagues and superiors – plus an occasional lover she can’t resist meeting.

My thoughts

The book opens as we follow a character known as ‘the man who was about to commit murder’ travelling through Barcelona on his way to kill. It is an intriguing beginning and immediately gripped my imagination and held my attention.

The murder of Professor Francesc Parellada, Professor of History at the University of Barcelona has Deputy Inspector Norma Forester being called away from a family celebration to take charge of the investigation. As you can imagine this was not a welcome event especially as her husband Octavi, head of Forensics, is also called in to attend!

The investigation into the murder of Professor Parellada, who had just returned to work following treatment for cancer and was still not very well, could find no enemies or incidents that would cause someone to want to kill him. It’s a real mystery and there are no leads to follow. That is until another murder comes to light which has a tenuous connection. There are no similarities in the deaths as Victor Porta appears to have been the victim of a robbery in which he is brutally stabbed whilst Parellada’s was a murder seemingly without reason. Nevertheless, Norma believes that it cannot be a coincidence, there’s a connection she feels and delves deeper.

We are treated to some terrific characters both from Norma’s family and her colleagues. There are a lot of characters whose roles are both important and less important. It’s worth understanding who is who as we have nearly as much written about them as we do the investigation. This is the first of a series of books to be published in translation and so the characters are all important as the ongoing storylines with the investigation being the unique story in each book. Norma’s family are supportive, loyal and caring. They also bring humour at times to the story which is a bit of light relief and gives a lift to the book which can be quite dark. Her family is quirky and what they get up to can be not only be worrying but possibly illegal and often funny. I particularly liked Mimi and Aunt Margarida is a really wonderful character. Individually and as an ensemble they bring another important layer to the book which I loved.

Norma is herself quite a complicated character, she has her flaws but clearly has a sense of justice with regard to the crimes she is investigating which is particularly interesting as in a way we see that it relates to her own history. Whilst I wasn’t keen on all her foibles she is a likeable character who could easily become quite a favourite.

There is also an array of colleagues, each of whom perform the various roles we are used to in criminal investigations, that we have been introduced to, such as Gabriel, Norma’s ‘sidekick’ and who, hopefully, we will come to know more about and see their relationships grow in future books. Then there are the characters that may only be ‘one off’s’ that intriguing character ‘the man who was about to commit murder’ who immediately ensured we were completely hooked on this story, the witnesses, members of the victims family and so on all of whom provide further layers of interest and depth.

The story presents some of Spain’s recent history which weaves through the book like a shadowy and poignant character. The Spanish Civil War brought terrible suffering and pain to Norma’s family as it did to other characters and in real life to many. How it affects the various characters is a fascinating yet deeply tragic element of the story.

This is a book that brings to life both the setting of Barcelona and the history that has obviously had a profound impact on the lives of the Spanish people.

Teresa Solana has written a clever, multi-layered, compelling and highly engaging book with a fascinating and thrilling mystery at its core. Black Storms is a book which I found evocative, moving, interesting and very enjoyable.

I look forward to reading more of this series which will hopefully be brought to us soon. It is only through the wonderful skills that Peter Bush, the translator, has and terrific publishers like Corylus Books that we are able to read such incredible stories as Black Storms by Teresa Solana.

I’m counting this towards my #HistFic24 challenge as I feel the Spanish Civil War, of the 1930s, element gives us both a personal perspective and an interesting insight into how the dark elements of the war have been put to one side under the Historical Memory Law and so-called Pact of Forgetting which as indicated in this story ‘endorsed forgetting and silence’ and how this impacted on various characters in Black Storms.

Here are some articles etc. which may be of interest regarding the Historical Memory Law, Franco and Spain’s Civil War. There is, of course, much written about this period but these are just a few introductory examples.

Historical Memory Law The Guardian (Thursday, 1st November 2007)

Franco’s cruel legacy: the film that wants to stop Spain forgetting The Guardian (Friday, 8th June 2018)

New Legislation, Spain The Guardian (Wednesday, 5th October 2022)

Among the most notable artistic responses to the war (Britannia) were the novels Man’s Hope (1938) by André Malraux, Adventures of a Young Man (1939) by John Dos Passos, and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) by Ernest Hemingway; George Orwell’s memoir Homage to Catalonia(1938); Pablo Picasso’s painting Guernica (1937); and Robert Capa’s photograph Death of a Loyalist Soldier, Spain (1936).

Francisco Franco (Britannia)

The Dictators Playbook Ep.5: Francisco Franco (PBS) | Amazon.com |Amazon.co.uk | Learn how Francisco Franco won the Spanish Civil War and became the dictator of Spain.

Thanks

Many thanks to Ewa Sherman for the invitation to join the Black Storms BlogTour and to Corylus Books for kindly providing an eBook to read and share my thoughts on.

BlogTour

Why not check out all these amazing blogs and then head down below to get your very own copy of Black Storms by Teresa Solana.

Information

Published: Corylus Books | Ebook publication: 25th October | Paperback publication: 1st November | ISBN: 978-1-7392989-7-5 | £9.99 | 250pp

Buy: Amazon | KOBO | Bookshop.org (affiliate link) | Hive UK | Your local library | Your local bookshop

Author: Teresa Solana is a multi-award-winning Catalan crime writer and literary translator, renowned for her inventive, distinctive style. Her first crime series has been translated into several languages, and her short story collection The First Prehistoric Serial Killer was longlisted for the CWA Short Story Dagger Award in 2019.

Black Storms is full of Teresa Solana’s signature humour, but also reflects social issues and acknowledges the weight of history that is part of Catalonia’s psyche.

Teresa Solana has won several national and international awards, including the Crims de Tinta for Black Storms.

Books

A Shortcut to Paradise (The Borja and Eduard Barcelona Series Book 1) | A Not So Perfect Crime (The Borja and Eduard Barcelona Series Book 2) | The Sound of One Hand Killing (The Borja and Eduard Barcelona Series (3)) | The First Prehistoric Serial Killer and Other Stories | Black Storms

Teresa Solana – Corylus | Teresa Solana – Bitter Lemon Press | Teresa Solana – Amazon

Translator