Jason WebsterKirja-arvosteluja

Four hundred pages to survey Spanish history from Neanderthal times until the present day. It's a big ask, but one that Webster accomplishes engagingly. Inevitably, it's a bit of a gallop, and it's clear that this is only a brief introduction to those stories which provoke curiosity - Moorish Spain is something I certainly want to know much more about. He also more or less ignores many regions - Catalonia only gets mentioned as modern times approach, and others are ignored completely. Anecdotes - about paella for example - get more space than is justified in this broad narrative. And the entire narrative is written to support his theory that violence is Spain's only way of addressing conflict. So while I found this account highly readable, it made me aware of how much more I need to know before I can evaluate this somewhat partial account. Nevertheless - recommended as a starting point for anyone who, like me, needs o start somewhere.

I'm a huge fan of Jason Webster's non-fiction books such as Violencia - a thoroughly accessible introduction to Spanish history. I also know Valencia quite well, so marry the two in a detective story set in the city and that's holiday reading sorted. Only it didn't quite live up to my expectations. The cast of characters slightly confused me and the plot(s) even more so. I willingly enough turned the pages, but I wasn't drawn in enough to feel I want to read any other books in the series.

Post University, Jason Webster has little idea of what he wants to do, other than discover Spain and immerse himself in flamenco. He succeeds in doing this, meeting some unlikely characters on the way, and becoming involved in illegal and dangerous activity too. I found Webster and his obsessive pursuit of flamenco hard to identify with, but this very obsessiveness means that the book from time to time conjures up vivid pictures of Spain and the Spanish.

I'm not going to try very hard to find any more books by Webster.

Exactly the escapism I needed, diving into a Valencia with Fallas and without Covid.

This is not Webster's best work about Spain, but the story is good and his vivid descriptions manage to capture the magic of the country that continues to draw outsiders into its grasp.

I have just read through other people's reviews and I agree with the couple of people who have left comments - I'm skipping over quite a lot of the civil war history parts (because I prefer to hear about them from a proper historian and not a cut and paste from other sources) and quite enjoying the personal bits - although I think he is being a bit shifty about not knowing anything at the beginning. After 12 years in Spain that is a bit weird. The number of people who have put 4 or 5 stars on without commenting also looks rather shifty - I suspect a bit of an attempt to make the author look good.

Blood Med by Jason Webster is the fourth in his series of books featuring Max Camara, an unconventional detective working for the Policia Nacional in Valencia. The city and country are alarmed when they learn King Juan Carlos is critically ill. The reader enters into a Spain filled with political and social chaos. Unemployment is on the rise, people have now become homeless, and banks are blamed and hated. Corruption further embitters a society which is polarized between rich and poor, left and right, and regional separatism.

Camara's case involves the vicious killing of young American blogger Amy, married to a local pharmaceutical salesman. Camara's new partner, Laura, with a background in investigating sex crimes and domestic violence, is convinced that Amy was killed by her husband, but Camara isn't so sure. Camara meets official opposition to his investigation, and has to deal with major suffering in his personal life, as he travels through institutional corruption to solve his case. As always, Camara's relationships and life outside of his detective work come into play, including his involvement with an anarchist refuge for immigrants and the homeless hiding down in the tunnels of the new metro, failed due to financial collapse. Televisions are always tuned to the King's health crisis and the political implications that will follow if he dies.

Blood Med is an absorbing crime thriller, full of suspense and excitement. The characters are richly drawn and quite original. I believe this series looks at more than just a crime investigation, but also explores how murder can happen in a corrupt society. I think this was a perfect choice to blend Spanish culture with the October tag of crime fiction. I can't wait to read the next book of the series.



889

Garbo, Alaric, Rags, Mrs Gerbers and Stanley have two things in common; they were all false, and they were all one man. However, he did have a real name, and a wife and children, and it is claimed that he is the one of the greatest double agents that we know of; but just who was Juan Pujol?

Pujol was a Spanish man, who disliked totalitarianism. He was involved in the Spanish civil war, avoiding serious action, but somehow managing to switch sides. With the rise of Germany in Europe, he slowly worked his way into the trust of the Nazi’s as a spy providing intelligence and information. His intelligent reports were eagerly received by them, and as the transcripts were read at Bletchley Park, they were equally worried by them. Pujol really wanted to work for MI5, and so he engineered a way of getting to the UK. Not long after he arrived, he was using all his powers of persuasion to convince them to take him on.

So began one on the most audacious double crosses yet known. Pujol’s fertile imagination led to the creation a fictional network of agents. These characters supposedly had some grudge against the state, and he placed them at specific ports and area of interest to the Germans. The Abwehr thought that they had a whole network of 29 spies in Britain; the reality was very different. With the assistance of the Double Cross team in MI5 he spoon fed a carefully concocted blend of truth and lies that misled the entire German high command, including Hitler himself.

This is another of those non-fiction books that read like a spy thriller. Truth and lies were blended in such a way that agents lives and movements were fabricated with all manner of details, and the Nazi’s swallowed the whole thing. The whole deception plan had genuine success too, even though it was touch and go at times; Operation Fortitude managed to keep the German Panzer Divisions near Calais where the next invasion was expected and away from Normandy after the D Day invasion, this allowed troops to establish themselves with much less resistance. This is still a fascinating story about an imaginative and audacious spy first revealed in Macintyre’s book, Double Cross. Macintyre has the edge on Webster as a writer, but this is still worth reading.

I felt really disappointed with this book. I don’t know why exactly I didn’t connect with the characters or the writing, I tried, I love music the enjoy music and dancing in the book but it doesn’t move you, you don’t merge in Jason's world.

I discovered this book by accident while looking to complete a challenge. What a serendipitous find! This is the first book featuring Chief Inspector Max Camara, who has been asked at the last minute to preside over a bullfight as president of the ring. He's less than delighted because he disapproves of bullfighting. He becomes mesmerized by the display put on by famous bullfighter, Jorge Blanco, and accepts an invitation to meet him at a local bar, along with many of his friends, to celebrate his success. When he fails to arrive, a search party is sent out and his brutalized body is soon discovered.

Nobody on the police force wants to investigate this high profile case, especially during a volatile election campaign. It's assigned to Camara, despite his pleas, and when a second victim is discovered, killed in a similar manner, there's even more pressure to find the killer. There are several possible suspects, including Blanco's female fiancee and male boyfriend. Camara teams up with Alicia Beneyto, a local newspaper correspondent who specializes in bullfighting, so he can better understand the whole culture of bullfighting.

The book's title comes from a Spanish proverb: “Either you kill the bull or the bull kills you”. The setting of this book is Valencia, Spain, during Fallas, the five-day festival of fireworks, bonfires and bullfights. The author fairly presents both sides of the bullfighting culture, including the history and pageantry of both man and bull. I really liked Max Camara and have already picked up the second book in the series, A Death in Barcelona.

2.5 stars really for personal reasons
"the characters talk politics almost more than they speak of the murder. "
read more: http://likeiamfeasting.blogspot.gr/2016/04/blood-med-jason-webster.html½

This is a book about more than a singular death, it is an exploration of the nature of death and what constitutes murder. Max Cámara, the Valencia detective introduced in Or The Bull Kills You, cannot sleep: his street is being dug up as the new Metro line is being built, the summer heat pulsates, and Valencia is crazy as it prepares for the arrival of the Pope.
The city buzzes with pro- and anti-Catholic emotions, with pro-life and pro-choice campaigners lining up their arguments for the Pope. Meanwhile the police force prepares security for the visit, as a developer is ripping up the old fisherman’s quarter El Cabanyal to build new apartment blocks. On the first page, a dead body is washed up on the shore. A well-known paella chef.
Max has eaten the chef’s paella but is taken off the case to help hunt for a kidnapped woman, a gynaecologist who performs abortions. The eve of the Pope’s visit is the worst possible time for this to happen. As always seems to happen in crime novels, two seemingly separate incidents are linked. The link, in this case, is carefully plotted so I didn’t spot it until the end. For me, this is a deeper more intelligent novel than the first in the Max Cámara series [there are now four], perhaps because the author is settling into the genre and the character.
I must add that Valencia simply rocks in this book, it comes alive off the page, the heat, the tension, the grief. I can smell the summer dust.
Read more of my book reviews at http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/

This is a coming-of-age tale about a young man going to Spain after university to discover himself through flamenco. Webster, in this his first book, tells of the two years he spent in Spain, drawn there by the passion and freedom of flamenco. He is looking for that indefinable 'duende', the heady mix of emotion, pathos and truth that all the very best flamenco music has. He wants his soul to be touched and to understand the how and the why. From day one he is an oddity, a blond Englishman amongst dark Spaniards, and he wants to learn to play flamenco guitar. Driven by an unrelenting teacher, slowly with aching wrists and bleeding fingers he learns the rhythms and palos. He stumbles from one crisis to another, from Alicante to Madrid and then Granada, playing guitar so much he finally has the stooped shoulders of the guitarists he admired on his arrival in Spain. He falls in love, falls in with gypsies, and sees the dark side of Madrid, but still he feels an outsider - not a Spaniard, not a gypsy, nor a true flamenco artist. It is an honest tale told unselfconsciously, he bares his emotions, shares his mistakes and his glee at the small triumphs. Finally, he discovers what 'duende' means to him.
Read more of my book reviews at http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/

The fist-fight described in the first chapter is quite a shock, and sets the tone for this excellent assessment of a search in modern Spain for the truth about the Civil War. Always a touchy subject in Spain, and one we never broach with our neighbours here, Webster stumbles on evidence near to his home north of Valencia. His journey takes him to key locations such as Burgos, Madrid and Guernica as he alternates chapters between now and the 1930s. His style is easy to read, populated as it is equally with an authority about his subject to an easy telling of his everyday travelling experiences. He gets under the skin of the real everyday Spain, the sort of places you get to only with fluent Spanish, an ability to ask awkward questions and no fear at hearing unpleasant answers. It makes me want to read all this other books about Spain.
Read more of my book reviews at http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/

Sometimes, reading Jason Webster’s story about life at his new rural mountain home near Valencia, it felt like reading our own experience getting to know our home in rural Andalucía. Reclaiming scrub land, planting trees, contending with the elements [for us that has meant -14° to +40°C], farming olives, confronting local wildlife, we have faced many of the same challenges. But we have never made our own hooch, faced a wildfire, or written stories in ink made from oak galls. Webster’s account of life on a hillside of the Castellón mountains brings Spain to life, he portrays his neighbours with fondness and respect, and through it all winds the tales of this mystical region combined with gardening advice from a 12th century moor. A unique ‘living abroad’ tale.
Read more of my book reviews at http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/

Page one, Spain waits, the king lies dying. There is the feeling of a nation on the edge. In Valencia, there are homeless on the street, immigrants are being harassed, the police department faces cutbacks despite rumblings of public unrest, and there are not enough drugs for the sick.
‘Blood Med’ is the fourth in the Cámara Valencia-based detective series by Jason Webster. There are two deaths and Cámara and his colleague Torres are given one case each, the hidden agenda is that one of the two men must be made redundant. One death is suspected suicide, the other a brutal murder. In the way of crime fiction, you know there will be a connection but that connection is of course invisible at the beginning.
The detective, orphaned young and raised by his grandfather, now lives in Valencia with elderly Hilario plus Max’s girlfriend, journalist Alicia. Both Hilario and Alicia have key roles in this story. Hilario is a huge influence on Max’s approach to life, and he often recalls his grandfather’s fondness for proverbs when he finds himself in a sticky situation. ‘Visteme despacio que tengo prisa’ he tells himself when he feels the investigation is being rushed. It translates as ‘Dress me slowly, I’m in a rush’. He feels the investigation has tunnel vision; that it is being rushed and would benefit from a step back. “If he could have his way he would send everyone home for the rest of the day to switch off. Go to the beach, go wherever. And have sex – with someone else if possible. If not, whatever. If helped clear the mind.”
This is the most accomplished Cámara novel so far, the setting in Valencia is so strong and the political background feels very real. The ‘corralito’ described [the government decree to close the banks] feels very real. There are a lot more stories to come in Max Cámara’s Valencia.
Read more of my book reviews at http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/

A Body in Barcelona – As many twists and turns as Messi

Jason Webster has written the fifth in his Inspector Max Cámara, A Body in Barcelona and once again he brings together many strands of Spanish society to a wider world. This crime thriller has it all, murder, betrayal, revenge and the occasional fascist with a trip across to Ceuta, on the edge of Morocco.

The political tensions are growing once again in Spain, the Catalonians are look for independence and the Madrid government is trying to keep them under control. Memories of the last time this happened was in the 1930s which heralded the start of the civil war and the coming of Franco, the last thing Madrid or those in Brussels want.

Cámara has just returned from a commission in Barcelona investigating the death of a civilian by the police, when he and his colleague Torres are summoned upstairs. They are given a case that has been taken from homicide and given to their new Special Crime Unit to investigate the death of a 10 year old boy found in a shallow grave in orange groves north of Valencia. Where, Fermín the illegitimate son of Alfonso Segarra, the fourth richest man in Spain, has been found and there are very little clues or evidence to help them out.

With seemingly no clues Carlos a member of the CNI offers Cámara the possibility of some information on the crime if they could meet and come to an understanding. Cámara has a problem with this, especially as he is a drug smoking anarchist when outside of work. There is something about Carlos that Cámara is uneasy about throughout the thriller.

The information Carlos provides Cámara will take him to Spain’s dirty little secret, Ceuta, Spain’s very own ‘Gibraltar’ in Morocco to arrest a Colonel Terreros of La Asociación de Ayuda para Legionarios, the Legionarios (elite Spanish soldiers) Welfare Association. The association seems to be a front for a right-wing Franco loving military organisation, fundamentally opposed to the breakup of the Fatherland and allow Catalan independence.

Daniel and his son Dídac organise the anarchists in Valencia and run the food bank that is close to where Cámara has his flat with his partner Alicia. Cámara knows them both well and often attends meetings they hold and eats with them, as he is sympathetic to their politics. When a politician is murdered in Barcelona both Daniel and Dídac head there to take the anarchist fight to the people.

At the same time it seems like there is a connection to Fermín’s murder and Cámara heads to Barcelona to continue his investigation and bring it to a close. Cámara rapidly works out that he is not the most popular police officer in Barcelona but he hopes that he will be able to bring the investigation to a successful conclusion.

A Body in Barcelona is a fast paced thriller that mixes many elements successfully which helps to make it a gripping exploration of the political and social tensions in Spain especially where Catalan Independence is concerned. Webster’s prose is as crisp as an iceberg lettuce and the imagery as clear as a digital picture which helps to make this an excellent thriller any reader will love, especially as there are as many twists and turns as Messi.

The 4th book in the Max Cámara series, which means if, like this reader, you've missed the first three, there's something to look forward to.

Set in post financial meltdown Spain, BLOOD MED is part crime fiction, part police procedural, part analysis of a society that's bottomed out. The King's illness seems to have provided yet more impetus for riots and thugs roaming the streets. Against this backdrop the brutal murder of a young American woman, and the suspect suicide of an ex-bank clerk seem oddly dwarfed. Not helped by the Machiavellian games being played by Cámara's boss setting him and his partner and friend Torres off against each other - budget cuts meaning one of them is going to lose their job.

Add to the tensions in the police, the health service is rapidly falling apart, with insufficient drugs for patient treatment, banks are foreclosing and leaving properties empty all over the place, and some people have been forced to live in the tunnels of the ridiculously expensive, and unfinished underground rail system. Needless to say, official corruption is at the heart of so much that's wrong.

It all feels like a very current day, and one can't help thinking very realistic, scenario. And there is a lot of concentration on those societal aspects in BLOOD MED. Whilst the investigation of the murders does continue, often times it definitely does feel like the society dysfunction is all encompassing. And very personal.

Alongside Cámara there are a number of other main characters - Torres his colleague, his girlfriend Alicia and his much loved grandfather Hilario. All the main characters play reasonably high profile parts in the investigation and in the way that society is viewed, analysed and highlighted.

For a book that's 4th in a series it's quite easy to get into, there's enough background on the characters to give you a good understanding of how everyone fits together. It actually makes you want to go back and read the earlier 3 books.

BLOOD MED is crime fiction that uses the setting of the murders as a way of taking a long, hard, detailed look at the society in which they occurred. This is less crime fiction for fans of investigations and closure as it is for those who are looking for the why, and how things can get to the extremes of murder.

http://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/review-blood-med-jason-webster

I enjoyed the first two books in this series but I thought this one was so-so. I felt like the author was skating a bit, 240 pages, didn't take too much effort on hero Max's part to do his job either, everything seemed to fall into place. I had a strong hunch as to who the killer was very early in the story. Very Early - and for once I was right. I doubt I will read any more books in this series if there are more. On the plus side I learned a bit about saffron and a bit about Franco. I'm still not sure why the killer did what he did; either I was too bored or the author didn't make it clear for me. Supporting characters seemed bored also, some relationships fall apart, others might be heading that way. Disappointing.½

I have just read through other people's reviews and I agree with the couple of people who have left comments - I'm skipping over quite a lot of the civil war history parts (because I prefer to hear about them from a proper historian and not a cut and paste from other sources) and quite enjoying the personal bits - although I think he is being a bit shifty about not knowing anything at the beginning. After 12 years in Spain that is a bit weird. The number of people who have put 4 or 5 stars on without commenting also looks rather shifty - I suspect a bit of an attempt to make the author look good.

jason Webster, who speaks Arabic and Spanish and has a Spanish wife, starts off on his journey around Spain with the idea that 800 years of Moorish identity must have left many traces in Spain beyond the obvious ones of architecture and language. For many years this was suppressed; the Moors had always been the enemy, the other. After the Reconquest in 1492, they were first forced to convert and then expelled from Spain.

"A Death in Valencia" is Jason Webster's second novel in the Max Camara series, following the very good "Or the Bull Kills You". Preparations are underway for a papal visit and in the meantime there is local unrest over two seemingly remote issues - destruction of old neighborhoods to modernize and extend the metro, and the government's abortion laws. And then there's a murder. The victim is a paella chef, perhaps the best in the city, and suddenly the story has more ingredients than a steaming serving of the city's most reknowned dish. As with the the first story, DIV has many criminals, most of whom work for the city government, and many of whom are related through marriage or have a common military experience. And then Max's flat collapses. And there was an abortion a long time ago, and a very personal one not so long ago. There is an awful lot to like about this book. I truly felt like I was in Valencia as I read it. Somehow, the author seemed to slow the pace of the environment, the language, the people, yet speed up the events of the story. The book was saturated with issues that envelope the Valencians in their daily lives and seemlessly wormed these issues into the fibers of the plot. This is a very well done book and I recommend it highly. It is not without its faults however. There are so many characters that a very lengthy explanation of who did what was necessary in the last ten pages - perhaps some of the characters should have been trimmed or the story lengthened to understand who's on first. The next book is due Summer 2013 and the author has wisely shifted the focus away from the bad guys of Valencia city government.½

Excellent descriptions of Valencia, Spain. Very evocative if you have ever visited that city.

Here's how Jason Webster describes his hero, Max Camara: "...a dope-smoking, Fallas-hating, proverb-quoting, flamenco-loving, Valencia-based murder detective with the Policia Nacional, with a complicated, shattered love life, no social life to speak of, and a career lying in tatters." I would have added brandy-drinking and interesting. A matador is killed, not just "a" matador but "the" matador. A high profile case. Then there's another body, and another. Pressure from the mayor's office (it's election time), pressure from the press. Pressure from the women currently in Max's life. And then there's the fiesta. This is a charming, fun read, one of the few crime fiction stories I have found based in Spain - and it's a very good one. I'll read the next in the series due soon.

spain is moorish but it's well hidden unless you know where to look - this book shows you