Jason Webster

Spain is corrupt and crumbling. The king is ill, banks are closing, hospitals are in chaos, homes are lost, demonstrators riot and rightwing thugs patrol the street. The tunnels beneath the streets are at once a refuge and a source of anger. And as the blood flows Camara roars on his motorbike straight into the heart of trouble. Camara is back in Valencia, with his partner Alicia and his anarchist, marijuana - growing grandfather Hilario. In the old police headquarters, the mood is tense, as the chief hunts for cuts - who will go, Camara or his friend Torres? The two men are flung into action on seemingly separate cases, the suicide of an ex bank-clerk and the brutal murder of a young American woman. Around them the city is erupting into demonstrations and near riots. This dazzling new Camara novel - constantly surprising, full of vivid characters - exposes the dark underside of today's Spain. A powerful, gripping page-turner, it confirms Max Camara as the detective to watch, feeling the pulse of the moment. "A series that just gets better and better. Each Max Camara novel is a treat to savour". (Mark Billingham). "Conveys a wonderful sense of Spain...[ Webster] does for the country what Michael Dibdin did for Italy". (Geoffrey Wansell, Daily Mail). "All great cities need a fictional cop, and now Valencia has one of the very best in Jason Webster's dope smoking Chief Inspector Max Camara. Step into his world of the corrida, corruption, and clouds of saffron and you'll be hooked. But if he offers you a roll-up". (Quintin Jardine).

Sent on leave after his last, brutal, case, Max Camara returns to his home town in La Mancha, famous for producing the finest saffron in the world. There, the past keeps pulling at him. The town is exhuming a mass grave from the Civil War, but why is his grandfather behaving so strangely? His old friend Yago is investigating a particularly nasty murder which sets off memories Max has been trying to bury for years. And then there are Yago's whisperings about a saffron mafia...Max finds himself plunged into the thick of a complex and intensely personal case that will put him in severe danger and have him questioning his past - and his future in the police.

In the hills above Valencia is a notorious nightclub called Sunset. When its larger-than-life owner, Jose Luis, dies suddenly, everyone assumes it was a heart attack. Meanwhile, all is not well for Max Camara at HQ. His new boss, Rita Hernandez, has it in for him and his idiosyncratic methods. He must abandon a complex investigation to check out what looks like a routine death at Sunset. But an anonymous phone call suggests otherwise, leading him to an unholy network of drug dealers, priests and shady officials protecting a dark government secret.

Este es un relato romántico sobre la fascinación del sol español, sus alejadas montañas y su vida rural. El autor de esta obra, Jason Webster, vivió en España durante varios años antes de que él y su socio, el bailarín Salud del flamenco, se decidieran a comprar un cortijo abandonado que se aferra en la ladera de un valle escarpado en la provincia del este de Castellón, cerca del pico sagrado de Penaglosa. Con ayuda de granjeros locales - y de un libro morisco del siglo XII sobre cultivos del huerto - Jason comenzó a forjar su sueño. Él nunca había cultivado antes y no sabía nada de plantas, pero lentamente él y Salud despejaron la tierra, plantaron y cosecharon sus aceitunas, las hierbas curativas y consolidaron los enclaves de las preciosas trufas, el oro negro de la región. Y más allá de todo el esto comenzaron a satisfacer otra visión, trayendo los árboles nativos de nuevo a los acantilados devastados por el fuego. A través de esta magnífica obra seguirás a los aldeanos de las lluvias del invierno al calor del verano, del florecimiento de los almendros a los ardientes festivales y a los antiguos peregrinajes, plagados de historias de cátaros y templarios ...

Ésta es la historia de un joven que busca su destino, y que tal vez acabe encontrándolo muy lejos de sus raíces británicas, en un rincón perdido de Andalucía. Su viaje de búsqueda empieza cuando un desengaño amoroso le impulsa a viajar a España..CONTINÚA

This is a romantic, utterly alluring leap into Spanish sunshine, remote mountains and rural life. Jason Webster had lived in Spain for several years before he and his partner, the flamenco dancer Salud, decided to buy a deserted farmhouse clinging to the side of a steep valley in the eastern province of Castellon, near the sacred peak of Penaglosa. With help from local farmers-and from a twelfth-century Moorish book on gardening-Jason set about creating his dream. He had never farmed before, and knew nothing of plants, but slowly he and Salud cleared the land, planted and harvested their olives, raised the healing herbs they learned about from local people, set up bee-hives and nurtured precious, expensive truffles, the black gold of the region. And beyond all this they started to fulfil another vision, bringing the native trees back to the cliffs ravaged by fire. At the same time they became drawn into the life of the valley: this is a book rich with characters as well as plants.

Las tensiones en España están aumentando: de repente ha vuelto a surgir la violencia política y el malestar social. Madrid está tratando de mantener a raya a Cataluña, donde la llamada a la independencia es cada vez mas fuerte. La ultima vez que Barcelona se movilizo, en la decada de 1930, España desemboco rapidamente en una guerra civil. AMBIENTADA EN ESPAÑA

'His descriptions of the Spanish underworld have a real zip and sense of danger to them ... he has found his voice as a writer.' John Preston Sunday Telegraph 'His greatest achievement is to involve the reader so deeply ...a pageturner.' Stephanie Merritt Observer 'Wonderfully told ... his journey is recounted like a master.' Wanderlust'If literary Duende exists ...then Jason Webster has it in spades.' Elisabeth Luard Daily Mail

WEBSTER,JASONIn Andalus Jason embarks on a quest to discover Spain's hidden Moorish legacy. He meets Zine, a young illegal immigrant from Morocco, a twenty-first-century Moor, lured over with the promise of a job but exploited as a slave labourer on a fruit farm. Jason's life is threatened as he investigates the agricultural gulag, Zine rescues him, and the unlikely pair of writer and desperado take off on a rollercoaster ride through Andalusia. Zine sets out on his own parallel quest, a one-man peace mission to resolve Muslim-Christian tensions by proving irresistible to Spanish señoritas.

Una pareja compra una casa de campo en ruinas, en un paraje solitario y olvidado del interior de Castellón, y durante un año lucha por reconstruir la vivienda, limpiar los campos, plantar árboles, y hacer frente a toda clase de adversidades. Su objetivo, regresar a una vida mas autentica, mas proxima a la naturaleza, a los ultimos habitantes de la comarca, a la historia y las leyendas de unas tierras situadas al pie de una montaña sagrada, Penyagolosa, cerca de donde encontraron refugio los ultimos cataros. En la linea del best seller Entre limones, pero mucho mejor , segun The Daily Telegraph, tambien aqui un ingles nos redescubre la belleza y la magia de algunos de los ultimos rincones paradisiacos que aun hay en España.

Se trata de un libro de viajes y a la vez un libro de historia, en una feliz combinación que aporta una visión joven, moderna y equilibrada de la guerra civil española. Un texto que asombra por su amenidad y su enfoque novedoso, en donde importa sobre todo la actualidad. Una magnífica introducción que atraerá a las generaciones que no quieren ni oír hablar del pasado, a través de una sorprendente crónica del presente. Por un lado, el autor realiza un recorrido por los principales personajes, batallas y escenarios de la contienda. Por otro, recorre la España de nuestros días en pos de muestras de que las heridas de la guerra civil siguen abiertas. No solo las fosas comunes, el Valle de los Caídos y el lugar donde yacen los huesos de García Lorca, sino ejemplos tan inesperados como un combate de boxeo ilegal, un travestí que es fan del revisionismo histórico, la retransmisión de un partido de fútbol vista en un bar…

After twelve years in Spain, Jason Webster had developed a deep love for his adopted homeland; his life there seemed complete. But when he and his Spanish wife moved into an idyllic old farmhouse in the mountains north of Valencia, by chance he found an unmarked mass grave from the Spanish Civil War on his doorstep. Spurred to investigate the history of the Civil War, a topic many of his Spanish friends still seemed to treat as taboo, he began to uncover a darker side to the country. Witness to a brutal fist-fight sponsored by remnants of Franco's Falangists, arrested and threatened by the police in the former HQ of the Spanish Foreign Legion, sheltered by a beautiful transvestite, shunned by locals, haunted by ghosts and finally robbed of his identity, Webster encountered a legacy of cruelty and violence that seems to linger on seventy years after the bloody events of that war. As in Webster's previous books, "Duende" and "Andalus", !"Guerra"! reveals the essence of modern Spain, which few outsiders ever manage to see. Fascinating true stories from the Civil War, vividly retold as he travels around the country.Yet the more Webster unveils of the passions that set one countryman against another, the more he is led to wonder: could the dark, primitive currents that ripped the country apart in the 1930s still be stirring under the sophisticated, worldly surface of today's Spain?

"Max Cámara está decaído. Unas grietas amenazantes han aparecido en las paredes de su piso; el cuerpo de un reputado chef de paellas ha sido hallado en la playa; hay reyertas y amenazas a las clínicas proabortistas con motivo de la próxima visita del Papa a Valencia, y el Ayuntamiento está dispuesto a demoler El Cabanyal, el pintoresco barrio de pescadores justo en el distrito marítimo.Mientras Cámara va esclareciendo esos asuntos, se encontrará envuelto en una red de corrupción y violencia, descubriendo profundos resentimientos y secretos ocultos que le forzarán a replantearse sus dudas y deseos."

Novela nominada al Crime Writers' Association New Blood Dagger Award. Max Camara "anarquista reticente e inspector jefe de la Policia Nacional de Valencia odia los toros, pero una tarde en Fallas tiene que presidir una corrida cuya estrella es el gran matador del momento, Jorge Blanco. Poco despues, el cadaver mutilado de Blanco es hallado en la Plaza de Toros y Camara se ve obligado a investigar el homicidio de un hombre que consideraba casi como a un asesino. Pero a medida que el nuevo caso avanza, se revelan secretos y pasiones escondidas no solo dentro de Camara, sino tambien en el seno de la clase politica de una ciudad plagada de corrupcion. Con una vida amorosa en caida libre, y anhelando cada vez mas la marihuana suministrada por su abuelo, Camara descubre que la fiesta tauria refleja algode los demonios que el mismo lleva dentro, precipitando un desenlace explosivo enla misma Nit de la Crema.

Spain is corrupt and on the brink of collapse. The king is ill, banks are closing, hospitals are in chaos, homes are lost, demonstrators riot and rightwing thugs patrol the street. The tunnels beneath the streets are at once a refuge and a source of anger. And as the blood flows Camara roars in on his motorbike...Camara is back in Valencia and in the old police headquarters the mood is tense as the chief hunts for cuts - who will go, Camara or his friend Torres? The two men are flung into action investigating the suicide of an ex- bank clerk and the brutal murder of a young American woman. As the city erupts around them, their case takes them into the heart of the trouble.