Shifting from the early days of Francisco Franco's brutal dictatorship to the immediate aftermath of its end, Victor del Árbol's brooding The Sadness of the Samurai gently exploits the dark-wood-and-Catholic Gothicism of Spain's historical imagery. It also exposes the hell of revenge and unfinished business reverberating long after the advent of democratic reforms.
In 1941, aristocrat Isabel Mola is betrayed by her lover and then secretly assassinated when a plot to kill her fascist husband is revealed. A generation later, in 1981, police investigator Cesar Alcala viciously beats an interrogation subject. Young lawyer Maria thinks she is clearly representing the new spirit of democracy and openness when she prosecutes the investigator. But when Maria learns that Cesar was a desperate father trying to locate his abducted daughter, she finds a dangerous web of lies and abuses reaching back through the Franco years all the way to Isabel Mola's murder--involving both Maria's own family and forces in the government that are still in power.
Much like the dark, complicated conspiracy thrillers of the late Stieg Larsson, The Sadness of the Samurai depicts torture, murder and far-right political ideology playing out over generations of silence and treachery, and fans of Larsson's novels will recognize a familiar thrill as Maria races against time to save Marta Alcala--as well as her own soul. But, unlike the underground fascists in progressive Sweden Larsson hoped to out with his fictional work, del Árbol's characters give voice to victims of a state-sponsored brutality that operated with impunity for much of the 20th century. --Cherie Ann Parker, freelance journalist and book critic