Law of Return (Sergeant Tejada Investigations) - Softcover

Pawel, Rebecca

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1569473803 ISBN 13: 9781569473801

Publisher: Soho Crime, 2005

Synopsis

The second Carlos Tejada investigation

Spain, 1940: Lieutenant Carlos Tejada has been transferred to Salamanca, where he studied law before the Civil War. His new duties include monitoring parolees—former professors who were fired for protesting a Franco decree. Elena Fernandez, having lost her job because of her political leanings, has returned home to Salamanca from Madrid, where she and Tejada were first romantically involved. Her father, one of the parolees, was a distinguished professor of Classics. He has just received a letter from a Jewish friend, Professor Joseph Meyer, begging for help to cross into Spain from France before he is forcibly repatriated to Germany. Professor Fernandez cannot violate his parole by traveling to the border town of San Sebastian, so Elena goes in his stead. Tejada, tracing a missing parolee, also finds himself there, and their paths fatefully cross again.

About this title

About the Author

Rebecca Pawel lives in New York City and is pursuing a PhD in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Her widely praised first novel, Death of a Nationalist, won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel and was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, as well as a best book of the year in the Chicago Tribune, Publishers Weekly and Detroit Free Press.

From Publishers Weekly

Like Pawel's impressive debut, Death of a Nationalist (2003), this sequel makes fine use of local color and scenic detail to evoke its unusual setting, post-Civil War Spain ("The fields were the color of cornhusk dolls, not a healthy golden yellow, but a pale, anemic reminder of green"). Alas, the plot doesn't carry the same punch as its predecessor. Series hero Lt. Carlos Tejada Alonso y León, a member of the feared and detested Guardia Civil in Madrid, has been transferred to Salamanca to monitor parolees. When one of his charges, Manuel Arroyo Díaz, disappears, Tejada follows the missing man's trail to Biarritz and is reunited with his former lover, Elena Fernández. Elena is now involved in a political matter concerning her classics professor father and his Jewish friend, Professor Meyer, who's in danger of being forced to return to Nazi Germany. Meanwhile, Díaz turns up dead with his head bashed in, his body identified from the cards in his wallet. Tejada investigates, but soon realizes more is at stake than mere murder. The author captures the anomie of postwar Spain while eschewing excess bloodshed, but the deliberate pace and relative inaction will frustrate readers expecting a more conventional crime novel. One can only hope Lt. Tejada's next assignment will prove more absorbing.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Soho Crime
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1569473803
• ISBN 13: 9781569473801
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 304