‘Fortress of Evil’ by Javier Cercas

Published by MacLehose Press,
24 April 2025.
ISBN: 978-1-52943-620-4 (HB)
Trabslated from the Spainsh byAnne McLean

Fortress of Evil (in an excellent translation by Anne McLean) is the third story in the Terra Alta trilogy. I had the pleasure of reviewing its predecessor Prey for the Shadow for ‘Mystery People’ in 2023, and Fortress of Evil maintains the high standard.

We are now some years on from Prey for the Shadow; indeed, the story is set in 2035, not that it is immediately obvious if you haven’t read the previous novel, although as a follower of football I should have suspected this the moment there was mention of a Barcelona v Real Madrid Champions’ League final which has yet to occur and which occupies an important place in the story. Melchor Marín has been a librarian for some years in Terra Alta, more than two hours’ drive from Barcelona. A former drug dealer who served time in prison before joining the police, Melchor remains a complicated character, living it seems on sandwiches and cola, who has retained his links with his former colleagues. His daughter, Cosette, is now 17. Melchor has always supressed the truth about her mother’s death many years previously, and now Cosette has discovered that her mother was killed in a hit-and-run incident intended to scare Melchor off a case. She feels angry and betrayed and goes to Mallorca with a friend, Elisa. Cosette makes it clear that she does not want to hear from her father for the time being and ignores his texts and calls.

Melchor’s concerns grow when Elisa returns without Cosette, even more when he fails to contact his daughter, and it appears that she has disappeared. He feels that he has no alternative but to travel to Mallorca to try and find her. He is getting nowhere when an anonymous email arrives and sets him on a path to the powerful Swedish American billionaire Rafael Mattson via another former policeman, Damian Carrasco. We soon get to the point where one imagines that matters may have been sorted (except that we are barely halfway through the book), but then Carrasco reveals a plot which appeals to Melchor and which requires accomplices. Melchor manages to persuade former colleagues and current officers to take part, some more easily than others and some more surprisingly than others. The manner in which Melchor gathers his team together is an important part of the story and brings many old feelings to the surface. The meeting at which they agree to go on with the scheme is particularly tense and is central to the story. Can everyone be trusted?

What marks this novel out from the general run of crime (as with its predecessor) is its complex collection of relationships (such as old feuds and jealousies) and vivid descriptions. And it constantly throws up surprises. For instance, I naively assumed that the actual execution of Melchor and Carrasco’s split-second plot would occupy a good part of the remaining narrative given how the tension over it builds up, but it is dealt with very quickly and it is other things that become important as the novel reaches its conclusion. Power by whatever method is a major thread, as it was in Prey for the Shadow, and themes of the MeToo movement range increasingly prominently (Harvey Weinstein gets a mention). As with Prey for the Shadow, the generally gritty atmosphere of the novel is leavened by Melchor being reminded by his friends that Cercas has written up his cases. The author’s use of the present tense has the effect of moving the action along.

Fortress of Evil can be read as a stand-alone, but it helped to have read its predecessor. I have yet to read the first of the trilogy Even the Darkest Night but intend to do so. In recommending this novel very enthusiastically, I hope that Cercas’s career in crime is not complete with this third story. Indeed, without perhaps reading too much into it, the last line of the book gives us cause to think that there is another path ahead.
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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 East Midlands Chapter of the Crime Writers’ Association.