C. J. Sansom - Winter in Madrid

WINTER IN MADRID

C. J. Sansom has earned a genre-transcending reputation with his first two novels, the 16th-century crime thrillers, Dissolution and Dark FireWinter in Madrid is a departure There are shades of Julian Mitchells Another Country in the portrayal of public-school ideological rebellion, and throughout Sansom offers an intriguing and equivocal vision of a country in ideological turmoil, to which the three Rookwood men are drawn by separate but equally powerful motives This is a novel about systems of authority and ideology: always, in the end, corrupting and corruptible, both beyond and beneath the scope of individual heroism

Sunday Telegraph

Sansom cannot easily be pigeonholed. [Winter in Madrid ] subtly mixes elements of different genres: part thriller, part romance, and part historical drama Post-civil war Madrid is finely and minutely observed, giving the entire novel a remarkable sense of place Together with the books intricate and tightly structured plotting, Sansom spins the reader through to its bloody conclusion Compelling and well-written, [this is] a well-crafted and entertaining piece of fiction

Sunday Express

Sansoms action-packed thriller is a classic tale of old loyalties pitched against new ideologies. Its portrait of murderous corruption, ranging from the Monarchists and Falangists in the government to the diplomats at the British Embassy, shows Francos Madrid to have been even murkier than Harry Limes Vienna

Daily Mail

The reality of Madrid of 1940 is recreated in authentic and believable detail. Sansom evokes the sights and sounds of a city [where] fear, hatred and desolation are palpable. There are some powerful set pieces in the novel As a portrait of a traumatized city, wrapped in silence because speech was dangerous, Winter in Madrid is a remarkable achievement

Times Literary Supplement

It is a bold author who, having found acclaim with two historical novels firmly grounded in a particular period, sets his third novel in an entirely different place some 500 years later but that is what C. J. Sansom has done, and he has pulled it off magnificently Winter in Madrid shares with [his first two novels] the authors enviable ability to land his readers in an alien world, yet make them feel entirely at home In Sansoms capable hands, story, characters and that indefinable spirit of place meld and twist into a narrative that grips the reader throughout its 500-plus pages weaving together hard facts with romantic fiction his bleak winter thriller chills to the bone

Literary Review

Winter in Madrid may surprise fans of Sansoms usual medieval crime novels. It finds him dispensing with his quill and fast-forwarding five centuries to 1940s Spain If post-civil war Madrid isnt natural territory for Sansom, you wouldnt know it the sorry state of the city is evoked in all its blood, dust and melancholy, while the story itself never becomes bogged down in polemic The climax is tremendously exciting and skilfully played out, and the characters, while tending towards stereotypes, are so convincing that its tempting to cast the actors who will play them in the inevitable big-screen adaptation

Time Out

A compelling tale of game-playing, memories and the impact of impossible choices. If you like Sebastian Faulks and Carlos Ruiz Zafn, youll love this

Daily Express

Sansom adroitly draws the disparate strands of his ambitious saga together. His non-pareil evocations of time and place anchor his characters with satisfying precision There are touches of Graham Greene; Hemingways here too But Sansom transfigures his sources into a moral universe very much his own. The sexual and moral equivocation is handled with cool assurance

Independent

C. J. S ANSOM was educated at Birmingham University, where he took a BA and then a PhD in history. After working in a variety of jobs, he retrained as a solicitor and practised in Sussex, until becoming a full-time writer. As well as Winter in Madrid, C. J. Sansom has written three novels in his historical crime series featuring lawyer Matthew Shardlake. He lives in Sussex.

A LSO BY C. J. S ANSOM

The Shardlake series

DISSOLUTION

DARK FIRE

SOVEREIGN

First published 2006 by Macmillan

This edition published 2006 by Pan Books

This electronic edition published 2008 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan Ltd
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www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-0-330-47283-8 in Adobe Reader format
ISBN 978-0-330-47282-1 in Adobe Digital Editions format
ISBN 978-0-330-47285-2 in Microsoft Reader format
ISBN 978-0-330-47284-5 in Mobipocket format

Copyright C. J. Sansom 2006

The right of C. J. Sansom to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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To the memory of
the thousands of children of Republican parents
who disappeared into the orphanages of
Francos Spain

B ERNIE HAD LAIN at the foot of the knoll for hours, half conscious.

The British Battalion had been brought up to the front two days before, rattling across the bare Castilian plain in an ancient locomotive; they had marched by night to the front line. The Battalion had a few older men, veterans of the Great War, but most of the soldiers were working-class boys without even the Officer Training Corps experience that Bernie and the smattering of other public-school men possessed. Even here in their own war the working class stood at a disadvantage.

The Republic had held a strong position, on top of a hill that sloped down steeply to the Jarama river valley, dotted with little knolls and planted with olive trees. In the far distance the grey smudge of Madrid was visible, the city that had withstood the Fascists since the generals uprising last summer. Madrid, where Barbara was.

Francos army had already crossed the river. There were Moroccan colonial troops down there, experts at using every fold in the ground as cover. The Battalion was ordered into position to defend the hill. Their rifles were old, there was a shortage of ammunition and many did not fire properly. They had been issued with French steel helmets from the Great War that the old soldiers said werent bullet-proof.

Despite the Battalions ragged fire, the Moors slipped gradually up the hill as the morning advanced, hundreds of silent deadly bundles in their grey ponchos, appearing and disappearing again among the olive trees, coming ever closer. Shelling from the Fascist positions began, the yellow earth around the Battalion positions exploding in huge fountains to the terror of the raw troops. Then in the afternoon the order to retreat came. Everything turned to chaos. As they ran, Bernie saw the ground between the olive trees was strewn with books the soldiers had thrown from their packs to lighten them poetry and Marxist primers and pornography from the Madrid street markets.