La Voz offers a novel in which Domingo Villar created Leo Caldas

It is certainly interesting that the film Beach of the drowned left the Galician viewer quite cold. When, in October 2015, the adaptation of the second novel in which he starred began Vigo Inspector Leo Caldaspublished six years earlier, the reader already had his own idea of ​​what the policeman created by the writer looks like Sunday Villar (Vigo, 1971-2022). I read watery eyes (2006) and Beach of the drowned (2009). And Carmelo Gómez, despite his acknowledged solvency as an actor, did not live up to expectations — apart from the other imbalances from which the feature film suffered. Somehow, no one wanted to give up intimate recreation just because of what the Leonian interpreter and the film offered him.

Since Caldas’s success was not in how bloody the murders were, in how bloody the crime scene looked, in how brilliant his investigative intuition was, in the ingenious plots and tricks, in the strong intrigue, Caldas’s wealth lies in the thorough construction of the character , which Villar endowed with full humanity, but above all, inimitable Galician — which, of course, does not prevent us from enjoying it beyond Pedrafito to Cebreiro.

Villar is one of the giants on the scene not to go Galician and Spanish. He died prematurely and unexpectedly on May 18, 2022, leaving tens of thousands of fans of the police genre orphans. Shocked, they grasped at the unique universe that Villar had built, and which he rounded off so phenomenally with his masterpiece. the last ship (2019). His literary world was like himself, as a person, broad, generous, smiling, empathetic, wise, accommodating… famous, in short. And not just in terms of the multitude — in fact, there aren’t that many — of characters who revolved around Commissioner Caldas, such as the father (he was determined to make his own wine) and his sidekick, the nimble clerk Rafael Estévez (a fitting contrast to the patient Galician ambiguity represented by her lonely and pensive boss).

As important as that cast is in his novels, or almost as important, is the landscape. Only those who deeply know and love Galicia, and especially the estuary of Vigo and its surroundings, can convey on paper the strength of that country, which takes on a decisive personality in his stories and makes the reader burn with the desire to become an excursion through the sights of the port of Vigo, Toralla, Tirán, Cova da Lontra… Perhaps the vital circumstances of Villar’s stay in Madrid—ah, the mists of nostalgia and homesickness—enhanced the filters of that magnificent lens that he possessed that ability to observe and narrate with an abundance of sensitivity, emotional intelligence, and humor.

This Sunday, the reader of La Voz de Galicia can access — at a price of 5.95 euros per copy, together with the acquisition of the newspaper — the first title of the noir trilogy, watery eyes, where Beljak gave birth to his taciturn police inspector. Here, Caldas and his intemperate colleague Estévez—he’s only been stationed in Galicia for a few months, struggling to control his impulses—confront the brutal death of Bueu saxophonist Luis Reigos, whose mutilated body turns up in the apartment he’s been renting on the island from Toralla.

Ken Follet, next part

Is watery eyes the second installment of the literary series La Voz de Galicia with the best contemporary crime novels that began last Sunday with hawk, the first intelligence agent incident conceived by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. The third piece of the collection arrives next Sunday May 14th with in the dragon’s mouthtitle in honor of the great author best seller Welsh ken follett.