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Art & Books Books

The Summer of Dead Toys

THE SUMMER OF DEAD TOYS by Antonio Hill (Doubleday), 355 pages, $24.95 paper. Rating: NNNN


It’s always a treat to discover a great new series and Barcelona-based writer Antonio Hill’s debut novel, featuring Inspector Hector Salgado, fills the bill.

It’s summer in Barcelona, the temperature is climbing, and the normally unruffled Salgado, on probation for attacking a human trafficker, has just returned from a visit to his native Argentina. When a young man falls to his death from a balcony in an upmarket part of the city, Salgado is sent to rubber-stamp what appears to be an accident. But the sharp-eyed inspector notices something out of place and embarks on an investigation that reaches back a decade and unearths one family’s dirty secret.

Hill has created an engaging and sympathetic protagonist in Salgado, a hot-blooded counterpart to his Nordic noir contemporaries. Suffering from the unrelenting humidity and the sting of his wife’s having left him for a woman, he stumbles along in his war against injustice.

But behind Salgado’s sad-looking eyes lies a formidable intelligence, and it isn’t long before – along with his inimitable female partner, who’s newly pregnant and feeling the heat – he begins to unravel the significance of the dead toys.

The plot twists and turns through the ramblas as the city swelters and Salgado moves closer to breaking the case, all while trying to figure out who’s setting him up for a murder he didn’t commit and placing a voodoo curse on him and his family. The ending took me by surprise – always a good thing and not an easy feat – with an added development that has me eagerly awaiting Hill’s next book.

The Summer Of Dead Toys is a great addition to the genre and a real sizzler.

books@nowtoronto.com

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