Back in 2010 I featured Rebecca Pawel’s 2003 debut historical whodunnit Death of a Nationalist. Not only was it one of the first books I talked about on this blog but also one of the first recommended by a librarian, in addition to also being a piece of historical fiction. I enjoyed Pawel’s novel and thought someday I’d read more of her stuff. Flash forward almost 15 years later and needing to read something set in Spain for Rose City Reader‘s European Reading Challenge (as well as The Intrepid Reader and Baker‘s Historical Fiction Reading Challenge and Carol’s Notebook‘s Cloak and Dagger Reading Challenge) I secured a Kindle edition of her 2004 follow-up Law of Return. Like Death of a Nationalist I enjoyed it and would like to read more of Pawel’s fiction. Maybe this time however I won’t take me almost a decade and half to do so.
Our star of the previous novel, Carlos Tejada has been promoted from Sargent to Lieutenant and with that promotion comes a transfer from Madrid to Salamanca. Understandably, it must be tough for a thinking man’s Guardia Civil like Tejada to leave the Spanish capital, but alas Salamanca is a college town, home to the same university where he studied law before the Spanish Civil War. Other than being cursed with a new boss who’s a pretentious martinet and a barely function police department things don’t look bad. Instead of patrolling the streets his days now mainly consist of meetings with parolees, many of those deemed by Spain’s Fascist regime as former or current subversives.
Almost immediately things become complicated when one of the parolees, Guillermo Fernandez a former university Classics professor defrocked for his anti-Franco views shows up at his regular check-in with his adult daughter Elena in tow. A former school teacher in Madrid, after being dismissed from her job due to her own political leanings she’s returned home to Salamanca. But unbeknownst to her father and the rest of the world her and Tejada, despite their political differences were briefly lovers during back in Madrid. Things quickly go from complicated to intense when Joseph Meyer, a fellow Classics professor contacts Professor Fernandez out of the blue. A German Jew forced to flee Nazi Germany and seek refuge in nearby France, he requests Fernandez’s assistance in smuggling him to Spain. France has recently fallen to the Germans and to remain there would be a death sentence.
To risk revealing any spoilers, like other whodunnits set in authoritarian countries those tasked with policing the population and maintaining political order must also from time to time solve crimes. In doing so, they learn crimes that appear to be the most political aren’t always so. Likewise, officers of the state, no matter how high ranking are never immune to corruption. With that in mind, I enjoyed Law of Return and look forward to reading the other two novels in this series.
