Teresa Solana

Blog Tour: The Butterfly House – Teresa Solana (2014, transl. Peter Bush 2025)

/ madamebibilophile / 20 Comments

Today I’m taking part in a blog tour for Corylus Books, a lovely indie publisher with a focus on translated crime fiction. I really enjoyed Black Storms, the first in Teresa Solana’s stories featuring Norma Forester of the Barcelona police, when I read it back in 2024, so I jumped at the chance to catch up with her – and her wonderful family! – again.

Here is the summary from Corylus Books:

“No money, no future – a motive for murder?

The economic crisis has hit Barcelona hard, and a personal crisis might be about to hit Deputy Inspector Norma Forrester’s family.

When a body is found in the grounds of a former grand villa, now a student squat, Norma finds the case uncomfortably close to home. The downturn has turned the city into a breeding ground for crime, or is the motive more personal? Unable to stay away, although this case may represent a conflict of interest, Norma can’t even count on the support of her forensic pathologist husband Octavi, who has more than enough to cope with following a major incident at the city’s Prat Airport. When a face from his past appears, he and Norma are faced with choices and conflicts – just as her focus should be on finding the killer.

With her trademark dark humour, Teresa Solana paints the portrait of a contradictory vibrant Barcelona, where nothing is ever black and white.”

At just over 200 pages The Butterfly House gets on with the story, doesn’t waste a word, isn’t overly convoluted and still manages believable characterisation. I really enjoyed it.

Norma’s daughter Violeta is still living in a squat, when her new maybe-boyfriend finds a woman’s body in the grounds. She calls her mother, despite the other squatters concerns. I found the particular history of the distrust of the Mossos d’Esquadra interesting, stemming from the time of Franco:

“quite the opposite of the caricature of the inept … force in Franco’s time. Deputy Inspector Carrasco was definitely an exception, but even with his coarse manners, he didn’t harbour the slightest sympathy for the dictatorship. Educated by the clergy, he oozed a deep hatred for anything smelling of sacristies, and, given the choice, he preferred the company of petty criminals”

Carrasco is supposed to lead the investigation due to Norma’s personal involvement, and you can practically smell him off the page:

“The moment she opened the car door, Norma had the dubious honour of verifying the urban myth according to which Deputy Inspector Carrasco’s vehicle was a mobile laboratory of biological warfare. Inside the policeman’s car were all kinds of organic material in various stages of decomposition, from crumbs and bags of mouldy food to mutant insects, ash, fag-ends, tins and empty bottles, dirty, screwed-up paper, filthy clothes, sand, dust and an alarming amount of unclassifiable objects”

But of course Norma isn’t staying away, and she finds present day socio-political forces exerting their power too. Not even the area around Sagrada Família with all its tourist money can escape:

“Before going into the premises, they took a look around the area and saw that many businesses had closed, with signs advertising that their premises were up for rent or leasing. On that side of the street alone they also counted six balconies with boards advertising flats for sale or rent.

‘Soon or later, this is all going down the pan,’ said Norma, shaking her head.

‘I thought it already had. Do you think things can get any worse?’

‘People’s patience has its limits. Never forget that despair can be a powerful lever.’”

Yet at the same time Norma and her team wonder how much money can be a motivator when everyone is in the same corrupt, broken boat:

“‘But it doesn’t really make much sense. The whole country is in debt and everybody owes someone money,’ said Norma. ‘People aren’t killing to avoid paying debts on money that was almost certainly dirty.’”

As Norma investigates, the reader is aware of more going on with her family than she is. I was concerned that my favourite characters from the first book weren’t going to make an appearance, but her mother Mimí arrives in one of the novel’s funniest scenes, with the incomparable Aunt Margarida not far behind:

“For a moment Norma imagined the expression on her colleague’s face if she’d told him her own private hacker was a nun in an enclosed order who lived in Pedralbes, and who, coincidentally, was a relative of hers.”

The story balances humour alongside the seriousness of the investigation perfectly. The pace is rapid but not overwhelming and I whizzed through The Butterfly House. As previously, I loved the characterisation of Norma’s family, and her colleagues were well-realised too. I’m so grateful to Corylus Books for translating this entertaining, astute series.

“‘For the moment the husband hasn’t asked for a lawyer. That’s a good sign,’ remarked Norma as they left the interview room.

‘Maybe, or perhaps he just doesn’t watch much telly,’ hissed the deputy inspector.”

Here are the stops from the rest of the tour, so do check out how other bloggers got on with The Butterfly House:

Blog Tour: Black Storms – Teresa Solana (2010, transl. Peter Bush 2024)

/ madamebibilophile / 13 Comments

Today I’m taking part in a blog tour for Corylus Books, a lovely indie publisher with a focus on translated crime fiction. For those of us in the northern hemisphere the nights are drawing in, and settling down with a crime novel that opens on All Saints Eve (Hallowe’en) felt like a perfect read for this time of year.

Here is the blurb from Corylus Books:

“Who murders an elderly professor in his university office – and why? Norma Forester of the Barcelona police force is handed the case and word from the top is to resolve it as quickly and as quietly as she can. Set against the backdrop of one of the most vibrant and exciting cities in Europe, Black Storms also highlights the darker side of Barcelona and its past, overshadowed by the bitter Civil War of the 1930s.

The past also touches Norma Forester, the granddaughter of an English International Brigades volunteer who didn’t survive to see his Spanish daughter.

This first novel in Teresa Solana’s is a fast-paced crime story that balances the hunt for a killer with Norma Forester’s colourful and complex personal life. She’s surrounded by her forensic pathologist husband, her hippy mother, and her anarchist squatter daughter whose father is Norma’s husband’s gay brother. Then there are Norma’s police colleagues and superiors – plus an occasional lover she can’t resist meeting.”

Black Storms begins with the murder from the point of view of the murderer. This wasn’t gory or gratuitous. There had also been a brief but effective portrayal of the victim, Professor Francesc Paradella who was an expert on the Spanish Civil War, which definitely evoked my sympathy without being sentimental.

We’re then taken to a birthday dinner at Deputy Inspector Norma Forester’s family home. I really enjoyed the portrait of Norma’s family, full of somewhat eccentric characters without seeming unrealistically colourful.

Her mother Mimí looks like “an old Hollywood actress who’d gone to seed or an eccentric fortune teller.”, in contrast to Isabel, her conservative mother-in-law. Her daughter Violeta briefly returns from living in a squat and also visiting is Aunt Margarida, Mimí’s step-cousin and a nun aka my favourite character:

“she’d been living comfortably isolated from the world and its problems for eight years, reciting ancient prayers behind those impenetrable stone walls. However, occasionally, she did miss the freedom of her secular life and, now and then, invented an excuse to go out and took advantage of her escape to go to bingo sessions, drink cocktails in Boades and hit the town with Mimí.”

I also liked Norma’s husband, principled forensic examiner Octavi, angry that because the Professor was from a powerful family, his death is treated more seriously than others.

“There were class differences even among the dead: upper-class corpses that led to frantic investigations and second-class corpses that were processed routinely.”

The legacy of the Civil War is part of Norma and Octavi’s home, not only through the family history but in their present. Senta, Norma’s grandmother mistakes outside noises for those of conflict and becomes highly distressed. It’s a brief scene but so moving in how it demonstrates the enduring trauma of war.

The reader soon knows who the murder is, someone pathetic and seedy, and very believable. The mystery of Black Storms is not therefore whodunit, but why. The why enables Solana to look at the long shadows cast by the Spanish Civil War and the enduring corruption in society.

My knowledge of the Spanish Civil War is shockingly rudimentary and Solana did a great job of weaving the history throughout the story without ever info-dumping. Past events are evoked through characters; there is an excellent scene between Norma, whose grandfather was killed by state execution, and Gabriel, her second-in-command, whose grandfather was killed by FAI anarchists.

The most severe condemnation is saved for how the legacy has been mishandled: “the circus orchestrated in the corridors of power had succeeded in drowning the transition in a mist of amnesia”.

But the novel is also resolutely contemporary and Barcelona is wonderfully evoked, even the less salubrious sides: “A city for tourists with cirrhotic livers looking for cheap alcohol.” Ouch!

From the start Black Storms had an assured style and Solana is so accomplished in how she weaves together a crime plot, the legacy of the Spanish Civil War, and contemporary social commentary. It never felt remotely laboured and the story pace was never weighed down by the importance of the issues highlighted. I thought Black Storms was a hugely impressive novel. And now I want another in the series to be translated, because I am already missing Aunt Margarida!

Here are the stops from the rest of the tour, so do check out how other bloggers got on with Black Storms: