A Shortcut to Paradise

Starred review from January 24, 2011
The murder of popular novelist Marina Dolç on the very evening she receives the coveted Golden Apple Fiction Prize in Barcelona sets the stage for Solana's outstanding second mystery featuring unlicensed (and untrained) nonidentical twin detectives, Borja Masdéu and Eduard Martínez (after 2008's A Not So Perfect Crime). The arrest of Dolç's bitter rival, Amadeu Cabestany, quickly follows. Cabestany's literary agent hires Masdéu and Martínez to either prove Cabestany innocent or find the real killer. Solana brilliantly skewers the authors, agents, and critics who compose most of the suspects as well as the literary prizes they fight over. The odd but innocent Cabestany finds unexpected notoriety in prison while the detectives try various ploys, including a gathering of suspects à la Agatha Christie. A delightfully droll double-barreled denouement provides a perfect ending to this romp, which should earn its author consideration for the kind of award she so cleverly lampoons.

March 1, 2011
Marina Dolc, the telegenic author of lurid best-sellers, is bludgeoned to death with the trophy she has just been awarded in Barcelona. The runner-up, a pompous author of poor-selling literary novels, is arrested for the murder, but the reader knows hes innocent. He was busy getting drunk and then robbed outside a Barcelona disco when the murder occurred, but he cant prove it. Unlicensed Barcelona PIs Eduard Martinez and Borja Masdeu are hired to prove his innocence. Solana repeats the success of A Not So Perfect Crime (2009) using a broad satiric brush to skewer the pretensions of Catalan writers, literary critics, academics, and the wealthy, while more subtly showing that life in Barcelona is far more difficult for ordinary citizens. The result offers occasional belly laughs, as in the memorial service for Dolc that begins bitchy but becomes an orgy-fistfight, courtesy of a celebrity caterers hallucinogenic canap's, and the prison-yard rumor that the jailed writer is a serial killer and cannibal. Its great fun for crime fansand anyone who has been bewitched by Barcelona.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)