Walking the lions

When Alex Nadal unexpectedly inherits his aunt's farm near Barcelona he has two problems, the first being that he is a piano player from New York with no knowledge of matters agricultural, and secondly, his aunt appears to have died twice: once at the end of the Spanish Civil War - or so Alex's father had always led him to believe - and again sixty years later, from a mysterious fall. Very soon after landing on Spanish soil it soon becomes apparent that Alex's is not a prodigal's return. From the moment he steps off the plane he is under pressure to go back to where he came from, but Alex is not a quitter and to him any problem can be solved if people are willing to discuss it. And sure enough, people are happy to talk - but not about Alex's immediate problem: anything but that. It gradually dawns on Alex that he is in the way of something but when he tries to find out what that is the answer is always the same: don't ask, let sleeping dogs lie. But Alex will not be put off and his persistence brings him up against some of the most powerful forces in the country, including Salvador Oriol, the uncrowned king of Catalonia, and his nephew Narcis, a sharply-dressed thug with a talent for violence. Yet Alex is not without allies, among them Carmen, the dark-eyed arts correspondent of the Barcelona daily, who seems heaven-sent. On the other hand there is Angel, doyen of hustlers and Carmen's exlover, who most certainly isn't. Together Alex and Carmen unearth a dossier of explosive information on events which happened in 1938 that forced his father to flee the family farm and in trying to find out why, Alex discovers that this is a country where there is no such thing as the past but a place where there is only unfinished business.