Written by: Rafael Reig
Published by: Serpent’s Tail
Welcome to Madrid of the near-future: waterlogged, half-buried and home to Carlos Clot, of Dickens & Clot Investigations, a detective agency like no other. A gumshoe PI with a specialty in tracking down characters who’ve escaped from the pages of fiction, Clot is paunchy, badly-dressed and in desperate need of a drink.
With three cases of missing women (two of flesh and blood and one fictitious), things take a sinister turn and Clot finds himself facing the all-powerful Chopeitia Genomics – a genetic-engineering corporation that controls everything from the heart of the city. Will Clot be able to survive the encounter, find the missing women and ultimately solve the mystery of Protocol 47?
This is the kind of genre literature that breaks all the rules, and does so with a manic grin. It’s a story that’s part science-fiction, detective noir, cowboy western and rheumy love story all in one neat fizzy little package. There’s a familiarity to the plot if you’ve read detective stories that have a Raymond Chandler/ Maltese Falcon vibe but it’s superceded by some incredibly inventive writing, sometimes brilliant and sometimes insane, and it’s even more surprising when you find out that the novel is translated into English from its original Spanish.
There’s one-liners galore, strange characters with equally strange names and plenty of surreal experiences to take in when you read this - the cult nature of this work will make it comparable to stories by such authors as Steve Aylett, Philip K Dick, Murakami, Jonathan Lethem and Kurt Vonnegut to name but a few.
At 182 pages it may seem short but it’ll mean you can read it in a day and then find yourself talking about it for at least a month or more. If you’re tired of quadrilogies and by-the-numbers airport paperweights then this is the book for you, and in the words of Carlos Clot himself: “enough said”.
Mo Ali was born in a haunted hospital and has exceeded all expectations and kept breathing.
A digital artist, poet and writer, he needs to find some paid work before the inevitable apocalypse. To make matters worse he lives in Berkshire.