‘Prey For The Shadow by Javier Cercas

Published by MacLehose Press,
6 July 2023.
ISBN: 978-1-52942-164-4 (HB)
Trabslated from the Spainsh byAnne McLean

Prey for the Shadow is the second book in the Terra Alta trilogy by acclaimed author Javier Cercas, whose novel Soldiers of Salamis, about the Spanish Civil War, won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. He also writes for El Pais and is professor of Spanish literature at the University of Girona.

The Terra Alta series is Cercas’s first foray into crime fiction. His detective Melchor Marín was introduced in the initial volume Even the Darkest Night (which I have not yet read). His backstory was told there, and we are reminded of it in Prey for the Shadow; amongst other matters, how his mother met an untimely end for which the perpetrators have not been identified, his father’s unfortunate political career and his own spell in prison for drug-dealing after which he joined the police. Since the first novel his wife has died and he is left to look after his young daughter. Marín is a complicated character, not afraid to dish out violent unofficial retribution. In prison he was encouraged to read by a fellow lag (who becomes an important character in this book), and Les Misérables has a great influence to him, not only in naming his daughter Cosette.

During this novel Marín is involved in reading submissions for a school literary prize and is thinking of quitting the police to become a librarian. However, he is persuaded to back to his old haunts to join the investigation into the blackmailing of the female mayor of Barcelona. A sex tape has surfaced, and the mayor’s political demise would benefit both her ex-husband and her deputy. Corruption, dishonesty and disloyalty are never far away. The story moves along swiftly with interesting characters, and contemporary themes are prominent: Catalonian independence, the Islamic attacks of 2017, inter-racial relations, bitcoin and the pandemic feature, and there is a discussion of the relative merits of Franco and democracy. Cercas uses different tenses for different sections of the plot, and you have to concentrate during a vital late episode when he combines these in the same passage. He also employs the unusual device of references to the first novel as Marín is made aware by others that he has been put into fiction. It somehow doesn’t seem out of place.

Prey for the Shadow is a well-plotted and thought-provoking contemporary novel about justice and retribution. Marín’s investigation reveals more about his past and the death of his mother, all of which encourages him to redouble his efforts to bring matters to a conclusion. And, as one would expect at the end of the second novel in a trilogy, we are left wondering what is going to happen to him. I for one will be keen to read the final instalment.
------
Reviewer: David Whittle

Javier Cercas was born in 1962. He is a novelist, short-story writer and essayist, In the 1980s he taught for two years at the University of Illinois, and since 1989 has been a lecturer in Spanish Literature at the University of Gerona. He is a regular contributor to the Catalan edition of El Páis.

David Whittle is firstly a musician (he is an organist and was Director of Music at Leicester Grammar School for over 30 years) but has always enjoyed crime fiction. This led him to write a biography of the composer Bruce Montgomery who is better known to lovers of crime fiction as Edmund Crispin, about whom he gives talks now and then. He is currently convenor of the Midlands Chapter of the Crime Writers’ Association.