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stacielynn's review against another edition
this one was one of those past and present things and i just couldn't get attached to the characters. the story wasn't compelling though it was set in fascinating times and appealing locales.
oh well....
oh well....
amymarietruax's review against another edition
2.0
Oof. This was a very rough read. The premise is interesting and I liked the way it talked about Portugal's role in world war II, the fascist dictatorship, the secret police, etc, but the violence against women is graphic, constant, and I think unnecessary. Probably 1.5 stars. Huge trigger warnings for rape, sexual assault, murder, torture, and incest.
brughiera's review against another edition
3.0
Wilson blends a detective story with historical fiction exploring a sensitive period of Portugal’s recent past. Both the stories of Detective Zé Coelho’s investigation of a young girl’s murder and of the wolfram smuggling during the war are gripping. It is only towards the end of the book that the links between the two become clear but then the shadows of the past on what appeared to be ‘a small death’ magnify it to the national stage. There are some clever twists which provide a satisfactory if painful ending to the book, but I found there to be rather too many connections and coincidences pouring out in the last few chapters.
april_does_feral_sometimes's review against another edition
4.0
'A Small Death in Lisbon' by Robert Wilson is two books in one for at least 500 pages. The first story, told in alternating chapters, is about a Lisbon homicide police detective's investigation of a sex murder of a young girl in 1998. The second novel is a World War II story involving Portuguese smugglers and opportunists who play a murderous cat-and-mouse game with Germany's SS Nazis. The two stories are seemingly unconnected for quite a loooooooong time.
Inspector Zé Coelho (José Afonso Coelho), the Portuguese detective, recently lost his wife in a car accident. He is still grieving, but it has been a year since she died. He has a daughter, Olivia, who is seventeen going on thirty. It is a time of change for Zé. Besides the death of his wife, he has lost a lot of weight, shaved off his beard which has changed his appearance to a more youthful 41 years old, and he has a new partner, Carlos Pinto, assigned him by his boss, Eng. Jaime Leal Narciso.
Narciso calls early to Zé's house, waking him up. A girl of fifteen, naked and bloody, has been found on the beach.
Solving the murder ends up involving Zé with people from all walks of Portuguese society! This could cost him dearly, even his life! Portugal underwent a revolution in 1974 - changing an extreme politically-right dictatorship to a democracy. The case soon becomes convoluted, involving people who were Nazi collaborators and Nazi victims. Zé ends up striving against strings being pulled by important politicians and businessmen who were known to lean to the right politically as well as those folks who were and are Communists.
The second novel takes place in 1941. The narrator is a thirty-two-year-old multilingual businessman, owner of a factory which manufactured railroad couplings. His name is Klaus Felsen. He will, of course, 'sponsor' the SS for the obvious business advantages (taking them to dinners for contracts), but he finds the men of the SS unappealing. They never let up on trying to enlist him. Besides business, his other interest is a woman, Eva Brücke. She owns a successful nightclub, Die Rote Katze. The club is also sort of a brothel, and Eva is a classic demimonde.
Things happen, and Felsen is forced to join the SS after they stop playing softball with him and resort to torture. Giving in to their tricks of carrot-and-stick tactics (he is made an officer in the SS after they show him the fist behind the power of the SS), Felsen is tasked by SS-Gruppenführer Lehrer, his new boss and scary monster, with gaining by legitimate and illegitimate means a metal called wolfram, important for manufacturing impenetrable tanks. Wolfram is in high demand, and Germany is in competition with Britain and America in attaining it. Portugal is the biggest supplier of wolfram in the world.
Between the stresses of the war, his coerced work in the SS, and his uncertain relationship with Eva, he definitely becomes an unreliable broken personality, not exactly a stable employee.
From Wikipedia:
"The Schutzstaffel (SS; also stylized as with Armanen runes; German pronunciation; literally "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II. It began with a small guard unit known as the Saal-Schutz ("Hall Security") made up of NSDAP volunteers to provide security for party meetings in Munich. In 1925, Heinrich Himmler joined the unit, which had by then been reformed and given its final name. Under his direction (1929–45) it grew from a small paramilitary formation during the Weimar Republic to one of the most powerful organizations in Nazi Germany. From 1929 until the regime's collapse in 1945, the SS was the foremost agency of security, surveillance, and terror within Germany and German-occupied Europe.
The two main constituent groups were the Allgemeine SS (General SS) and Waffen-SS (Armed SS). The Allgemeine SS was responsible for enforcing the racial policy of Nazi Germany and general policing, whereas the Waffen-SS consisted of combat units within Nazi Germany's military. A third component of the SS, the SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV), ran the concentration camps and extermination camps. Additional subdivisions of the SS included the Gestapo and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) organizations. They were tasked with the detection of actual or potential enemies of the Nazi state, the neutralization of any opposition, policing the German people for their commitment to Nazi ideology, and providing domestic and foreign intelligence.
The SS was the organization most responsible for the genocidal killing of an estimated 5.5 to 6 million Jews and millions of other victims during the Holocaust. Members of all of its branches committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during World War II (1939–45). The SS was also involved in commercial enterprises and exploited concentration camp inmates as slave labor. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS-Totenkopfverbände
Wolfram, per Wikipedia:
"Tungsten, or wolfram, is a chemical element with the symbol W and atomic number 74. The name tungsten comes from the former Swedish name for the tungstate mineral scheelite, tung sten or "heavy stone". Tungsten is a rare metal found naturally on Earth almost exclusively combined with other elements in chemical compounds rather than alone. It was identified as a new element in 1781 and first isolated as a metal in 1783. Its important ores include wolframite and scheelite.
"Tungsten's many alloys have numerous applications, including incandescent light bulb filaments, X-ray tubes (as both the filament and target), electrodes in gas tungsten arc welding, superalloys, and radiation shielding. Tungsten's hardness and high density give it military applications in penetrating projectiles. Tungsten compounds are also often used as industrial catalysts."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungsten
Perhaps some of you may remember a publisher of science fiction, called Ace Books. I LOVED Ace novels!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ace_Books
One of the things which fascinated me about Ace novels was they used a publishing gimmick called tête-bêche.
The term "dos-à-dos" is also used to refer to a single volume in which two texts are bound together, with one text rotated 180° relative to the other, such that when one text runs head-to-tail, the other runs tail-to-head. However, this type of binding is properly termed tête-bêche (/tɛtˈbɛʃ/) (from the French meaning "head-to-toe", literally referring to a type of bed). Books bound in this way have no back cover, but instead have two front covers and a single spine with two titles. When a reader reaches the end of the text of one of the works, the next page is the (upside-down) last page of the other work. These volumes are also referred to as "upside-down books" or "reversible books".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dos-à-dos_binding#Tête-bêche
I have absolutely no reason to write of this publishing gimmick here in this review, gentle reader, other than that 'A Small Death in Lisbon' brought the memory back of my now lost collection of tête-bêche Ace science fiction books. I couldn't understand the connection between these two very different stories - a noir WWII thriller and a detective story involving a murder. It isn't until the last few chapters either of these very convoluted twisting tales show any hints of having anything to do with each other. They are like separate braids on a person's head, in completely different hemispheres! Then, BANG! The braids are pulled over each other into another, single, twisted configuration! I thought it was done, but, no! Another braid suddenly pops out, a short tail, hidden under the new big thick one!
'A Small Death in Lisbon' is one mind-boggling mystery. It kept me on my toes!
Inspector Zé Coelho (José Afonso Coelho), the Portuguese detective, recently lost his wife in a car accident. He is still grieving, but it has been a year since she died. He has a daughter, Olivia, who is seventeen going on thirty. It is a time of change for Zé. Besides the death of his wife, he has lost a lot of weight, shaved off his beard which has changed his appearance to a more youthful 41 years old, and he has a new partner, Carlos Pinto, assigned him by his boss, Eng. Jaime Leal Narciso.
Narciso calls early to Zé's house, waking him up. A girl of fifteen, naked and bloody, has been found on the beach.
Solving the murder ends up involving Zé with people from all walks of Portuguese society! This could cost him dearly, even his life! Portugal underwent a revolution in 1974 - changing an extreme politically-right dictatorship to a democracy. The case soon becomes convoluted, involving people who were Nazi collaborators and Nazi victims. Zé ends up striving against strings being pulled by important politicians and businessmen who were known to lean to the right politically as well as those folks who were and are Communists.
The second novel takes place in 1941. The narrator is a thirty-two-year-old multilingual businessman, owner of a factory which manufactured railroad couplings. His name is Klaus Felsen. He will, of course, 'sponsor' the SS for the obvious business advantages (taking them to dinners for contracts), but he finds the men of the SS unappealing. They never let up on trying to enlist him. Besides business, his other interest is a woman, Eva Brücke. She owns a successful nightclub, Die Rote Katze. The club is also sort of a brothel, and Eva is a classic demimonde.
Things happen, and Felsen is forced to join the SS after they stop playing softball with him and resort to torture. Giving in to their tricks of carrot-and-stick tactics (he is made an officer in the SS after they show him the fist behind the power of the SS), Felsen is tasked by SS-Gruppenführer Lehrer, his new boss and scary monster, with gaining by legitimate and illegitimate means a metal called wolfram, important for manufacturing impenetrable tanks. Wolfram is in high demand, and Germany is in competition with Britain and America in attaining it. Portugal is the biggest supplier of wolfram in the world.
Between the stresses of the war, his coerced work in the SS, and his uncertain relationship with Eva, he definitely becomes an unreliable broken personality, not exactly a stable employee.
From Wikipedia:
"The Schutzstaffel (SS; also stylized as with Armanen runes; German pronunciation; literally "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II. It began with a small guard unit known as the Saal-Schutz ("Hall Security") made up of NSDAP volunteers to provide security for party meetings in Munich. In 1925, Heinrich Himmler joined the unit, which had by then been reformed and given its final name. Under his direction (1929–45) it grew from a small paramilitary formation during the Weimar Republic to one of the most powerful organizations in Nazi Germany. From 1929 until the regime's collapse in 1945, the SS was the foremost agency of security, surveillance, and terror within Germany and German-occupied Europe.
The two main constituent groups were the Allgemeine SS (General SS) and Waffen-SS (Armed SS). The Allgemeine SS was responsible for enforcing the racial policy of Nazi Germany and general policing, whereas the Waffen-SS consisted of combat units within Nazi Germany's military. A third component of the SS, the SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV), ran the concentration camps and extermination camps. Additional subdivisions of the SS included the Gestapo and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) organizations. They were tasked with the detection of actual or potential enemies of the Nazi state, the neutralization of any opposition, policing the German people for their commitment to Nazi ideology, and providing domestic and foreign intelligence.
The SS was the organization most responsible for the genocidal killing of an estimated 5.5 to 6 million Jews and millions of other victims during the Holocaust. Members of all of its branches committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during World War II (1939–45). The SS was also involved in commercial enterprises and exploited concentration camp inmates as slave labor. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS-Totenkopfverbände
Wolfram, per Wikipedia:
"Tungsten, or wolfram, is a chemical element with the symbol W and atomic number 74. The name tungsten comes from the former Swedish name for the tungstate mineral scheelite, tung sten or "heavy stone". Tungsten is a rare metal found naturally on Earth almost exclusively combined with other elements in chemical compounds rather than alone. It was identified as a new element in 1781 and first isolated as a metal in 1783. Its important ores include wolframite and scheelite.
"Tungsten's many alloys have numerous applications, including incandescent light bulb filaments, X-ray tubes (as both the filament and target), electrodes in gas tungsten arc welding, superalloys, and radiation shielding. Tungsten's hardness and high density give it military applications in penetrating projectiles. Tungsten compounds are also often used as industrial catalysts."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungsten
Perhaps some of you may remember a publisher of science fiction, called Ace Books. I LOVED Ace novels!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ace_Books
One of the things which fascinated me about Ace novels was they used a publishing gimmick called tête-bêche.
The term "dos-à-dos" is also used to refer to a single volume in which two texts are bound together, with one text rotated 180° relative to the other, such that when one text runs head-to-tail, the other runs tail-to-head. However, this type of binding is properly termed tête-bêche (/tɛtˈbɛʃ/) (from the French meaning "head-to-toe", literally referring to a type of bed). Books bound in this way have no back cover, but instead have two front covers and a single spine with two titles. When a reader reaches the end of the text of one of the works, the next page is the (upside-down) last page of the other work. These volumes are also referred to as "upside-down books" or "reversible books".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dos-à-dos_binding#Tête-bêche
I have absolutely no reason to write of this publishing gimmick here in this review, gentle reader, other than that 'A Small Death in Lisbon' brought the memory back of my now lost collection of tête-bêche Ace science fiction books. I couldn't understand the connection between these two very different stories - a noir WWII thriller and a detective story involving a murder. It isn't until the last few chapters either of these very convoluted twisting tales show any hints of having anything to do with each other. They are like separate braids on a person's head, in completely different hemispheres! Then, BANG! The braids are pulled over each other into another, single, twisted configuration! I thought it was done, but, no! Another braid suddenly pops out, a short tail, hidden under the new big thick one!
'A Small Death in Lisbon' is one mind-boggling mystery. It kept me on my toes!
erindoeshistory's review against another edition
4.0
I thoroughly enjoyed the weaving of the two time periods and how the author was able to seamlessly go from one to the other. I never felt taken out of the story by the switches in time periods during the book’s duration. I was happy to be able to read this while in Lisbon! Very intriguing
anabelat's review against another edition
dark
informative
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
jeanniereads4life's review against another edition
Good but I didn’t like the abuse and sexual stuff too
Much!
Much!
scribal8's review against another edition
2.0
I like to read books about place and the history of a place. And this book is certainly about place and history. I give it only 2 stars because it's tag line could be: "Men are afraid women might laugh at them and women are afraid men might kill them." Except the sexual abuse is worse than that-- it seems to be the main personality characteristic for most of the men. I'm not sure why I'm continuing to read it. Sunk costs maybe? I want to find out if there's any redemption at all. And the historical and geographical details are interesting.
nanvdand's review against another edition
3.0
“We are all mad, Inspector, for the simple reason that we don’t know why we exist and this...this life is how we distract ourselves so that we don’t have to think about things too difficult for us to comprehend”.
That quote (from the book) pretty much sums up how I felt about the book. The first half of the book was relatively easy to follow. It was interesting to read about the Nazis and the Allies vying for the tungsten steel of Portugal during WWII. But the second half where the more current day murder is investigated started getting so confusing with ALL the characters. Good thing I read it on my Kindle so I could search the book to find when someone was introduced.
The resolution is very tidy but very complex. If you read this book I suggest you keep track of all the characters in a workflow diagram. You’ll thank me for it.
That quote (from the book) pretty much sums up how I felt about the book. The first half of the book was relatively easy to follow. It was interesting to read about the Nazis and the Allies vying for the tungsten steel of Portugal during WWII. But the second half where the more current day murder is investigated started getting so confusing with ALL the characters. Good thing I read it on my Kindle so I could search the book to find when someone was introduced.
The resolution is very tidy but very complex. If you read this book I suggest you keep track of all the characters in a workflow diagram. You’ll thank me for it.
viktoriya's review against another edition
1.0
I found this book boring, very drawn out, and not well written.