Having hugely enjoyed The Beach of the Drowned, I guess I was always open to disappointment with my second Domingo Villar detective story (the third so far in the series about Galician detective Leo Caldas).

And sure enough, El Ultimo Barco (The Last Boat) was not quite as atmospheric as its predecessor, and I wondered sometimes about some of the plotting. (Was it just all too convenient that a terror alert significantly delays all the mobile phone data, leaving the detectives for a long time on the wrong track? Or is that actually just realistic? And did we really need the melodrama right at the end? Or would a lower-key close have been more in keeping with the way the narrative had developed up to then?)

All that said, it was still a great read...

In the acknowledgements at the end, the author explains that the book pays homage, inter alia, "to those who do things slowly". And indeed, it's not only the potters and painters and instrument-makers whose painstaking and dedicated mode of procedure is evoked and celebrated here -- it's also the meticulous, piece-by-piece type of police investigation that forms the backbone of the story.

Like The Beach of the Drowned, the novel paints a wonderful picture of Galicia, this time focusing on Vigo and the small towns on its much quieter opposite bank, Moana and Tiran. Again, there is plenty of wind and rain in the descriptions, but the overall impression we walk away with is of a powerful, elemental beauty.

And surely no author mentions seagulls as often as Villar? All by itself, that's reason enough to read him.







Conversations with the ferry personnel reveal troubles in this beautiful landscape, however. The little ferries used to be full of people going to work in the factories and shipyards of Vigo. Now, the people who travel are at a loose end, and looking for work. "In the future," says one of the staff, "we'll only be carrying patients going to psychiatric consultations," adding that she worries about passengers who start looking overboard in the middle of the river. Even Napoleon, the homeless dispenser of Latin aphorisms, notices that there are ever fewer people in a position to support him.

It was not always so. The end of the 19th century had seen Vigo transformed from fishing village to vibrant city, as shipbuilders and canners set up shop there. Now, it is tourism that is the lifeline, although Leo Caldas is no fonder of this industry than he was the last time we met him. Cruise liners, bigger than any of the city's buildings, he notes, and blotting out the horizon, regularly decant their crowds of passengers, decked out on rainy days in uniform yellow macs. Caldas can't understand why people would choose to "spend their holidays going from port to port on board one of those gigantic ships, sleeping in closed cabins where you couldn't feel the wind on your face".

Aside from its engaging portrayal of a region, the book is likable for its very human depictions of police work. Like all of us, Caldas follows flashes of intuition that turn out to be incorrect; he allows antipathy to the victim's admittedly infuriating father to cloud his judgement; he neglects a key detail, with lethal consequences; and he experiences very painfully the sharp bite of remorse.

Yet he is no ascetic. This instalment of his career sees him starting up a relationship. And his smoking habit has obviously not killed his love of food. In what is perhaps the book's funniest exchange, Rafael, Caldas's assistant, asks whether there is time to eat something. "'In 10 minutes?' Leo Caldas replied, as though he had never heard a more unlikely proposal. 'I was afraid so,' sighed the man from Aragon, ordering himself a still water."

It is these human touches, just as much as the elucidation of the crime, that distinguish memorable and worthwhile detective fiction from its flashier, more ephemeral brethren. I would be very happy to read more about Leo Caldas and his entourage. Let's hope it's not another decade before the next one emerges.