The Mystery, Crime, and Thriller Group discussion

Spoiler thread for A Small Death in Lisbon, by
Robert Wilson. Say what you like about this book at any time.

I haven't decided what I am going to rate this one yet, but I really disliked it. I do appreciate that it was very ambitious, even though it did not work for me. I think the biggest thing I struggled with us that I didn't much like the characters that we are supposed to sympathize with, like the main character, his daughter, and his partner.

Vanessa, what didn't you like about Coehlo?

I am about 2/3 through the book and am finally seeing some connections between the two time periods that may have something to do with the contemporary murder. I must admit the initial chapters in the WWII time period were very tedious. It really wasn't until Felsen began working in Portugal that I felt that storyline time period picked up for me. I was much more interested in the contemporary murder investigation.

There are plenty of odious characters in both time periods and scenes that are difficult to read or digest. Even the victim is difficult to care about as her character is revealed. If you feel as I do about her (at this point, at least), how does that impact your feeling about the story in general when you don't care for the victim(s)?

I didn't have too strong of an opinion of Coehlo until the final chapter, so I don't want to give too much away. His final conversation for the person ultimately responsible for the murder was really unsatisfying for me. It seemed like the emphasis and climax was related to Coehlo's personal life way more than justice or the victims. Before that, I think he was mostly tarnished by association through how much I disliked his partner.

Reading the book, it felt like Catarina was really far in the background. No character seemed to know her or care deeply for her. I felt quite a bit for that aspect of her character. I think in a different book she could have been more sympathetic.

WOW! So I just finished. Vanessa, you certainly are right about the ending being somewhat unsatisfying as the person who orchestrated what culminated in Catarina's murder goes scott free. That might be more realistic than everything getting neatly wrapped up and all the perpetrators of any criminal activity getting put away.
So much to say. I'll start with a few things.

What a convoluted plot...and I have to say the events that lead to her murder all are hinged on men's sexual appetites and to start the ball rolling it is Klaus Felsen cuckolding his partner. Not that Abrantes could be trusted either!!

I had a hard time feeling sorry for Catarina. Not that I think she deserved to be murdered, but I don't think the author did enough to explore why she behaved the way she did ( not just the betrayal of her mother). I wanted to have sympathy for her. And I was pretty disgusted about the thought that her own biological father (unbeknown to him) had sex with her.

I did have sympathy with the murderer surprisingly. He had a longstanding hate for a man who murdered his wife & child, and got caught up by new information that stoked his need for revenge and then followed through with it. Temporary insanity perhaps?

I was surprised that people involved with the fascist government, communist movement and revolution still were haunted about that period in history and that their contemporary actions were sometimes predicated by that history.

I agree that many of the characters are not particularly likeable, but the plot kept me engaged all the way. I read Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory a while ago and learned a lot more about the role played by Spain and Portugal in WWII which I was not particularly familiar with. This book added more information to that part of history for me.

I'm nearing the end and the is just catching up to the other story. I find I'm having a hard time with it though. It's just not engaging me like others I have read.

When I saw there was a World War II thriller mixed in with the present-time murder mystery, I initially felt dismay. I have read too many World War stories lately. Plus, it was like two novels had been pasted together for 7/8ths of the novel! What on Earth? However, the denouement made up for everything for me! Hoorah! Clever clever tricky matryoshka plotting! I adore nesting surprise endings!

I am a terribly jaded person. I expect people to be bad, whether in real life and now in fiction, since writers today definitely no longer attempt to write of unrealistic happy endings or of successful purity in motivations any longer. It is all about trying to understand just how bad people or characters will be, since I haved lived long enough for secrets in real life - families, governments, marriages and past wars - to have come out in my own lifetime. Novels reflect real life more than ever.

When I read, I do not take fictional stories too seriously these days, like I did fifty years ago and up until the last ten years. Now I am more appreciative of an author's cleverness or inventiveness or weaving in of facts and of stylistic writing than I am of escaping into the story.

And if characters are unadmirable and rotten, I am afraid I think, "That one is just like X at that job I had forty years ago!" Or "She is the same as that woman who married my poor friend thirty years ago!" In other words, I have the gloriously gauzy joy of looking back at a faded, maybe now funny incident or person, with the passage of Time. When a book has a troublesome reminder of a bad or evil thing from long ago or it is only a story about a fictional evil thing or person, maturity has lowered the degree of disgust and raw rage I remember feeling when I was younger. Now I can finish books I would not have when younger. I still feel a lot of disgust when reading. This book had some very terrible characters, but the backstories do give plausible context for them.

aPriL does feral sometimes wrote: "When I saw there was a World War II thriller mixed in with the present-time murder mystery, I initially felt dismay. I have read too many World War stories lately. Plus, it was like two novels had ..."

Love your commentary!

Chris wrote: "aPriL does feral sometimes wrote: "When I saw there was a World War II thriller mixed in with the present-time murder mystery, I initially felt dismay. I have read too many World War stories lately..."

Thank you, Chris.

My problem with the ending was more that it seemed to expect me to care a lot about the main character's relationship. The conversation that seemed like it was intended to be the climax of the novel was focused on if the girlfriend was in on it or not, but I didn't much care about that. That was where the tension and focus was, while the conversation with the person ultimately responsible for everything was pretty mild. The interrogation of Catarina's biological father had a lot more intensity and passion to it. The main character didn't seem to care all that much about solving the mystery itself once he had put the puzzle pieces together.

The only other reason to read past the final reveal (other than seeing if there might be more of them) was to see if the partner lived, but I would have been fine if he hadn't.

I was also a bit distracted by why the bad guys didn't just have the private investigator call up his friend and tell him he's fine when the friend kept looking for him or have an officer file a report saying he was found in America or whatever. I didn't get the impression that we were supposed to think that they were lying about him leaving the country. Why keep that person looking for him when it would be so simple to put a stop to it?

I found the WWII-era characters to be more compelling. The characters I thought were the most interesting were Fenlo, Ambrantes, and the woman Fenlo was seeing in Berlin. I think I would have liked the book more if it was mostly that with the future stuff being more of a long framing device.

I liked the book. It was a little long in the beginning and middle, not knowing how the two stories would tie together. But tie together they did.

A couple difficulties. I didn't altogether understand why Felsen and Abrantes had to kill their partners, except that that of course allowed the one partner to get free for Felsen to kill later on and get arrested. Why didn't Felsen hire his own lawyer to get himself off? He went down a little too easily. And it seemed awfully easy getting Felsen to talk at the end.

Oddly I liked the book a lot more once I'd finished it than while I was reading it. Toward the end the pace quickened quite a bit.