Spain’s Classic Bon Vivant Private Eye Arrives Stateside

Manuel Vazquez Montalban’s Spanish private eye Pepe Carvalho is in the classic mold. He’s tougher than Sam Spade, drinks more than Philip Marlowe, dines better than Spenser and has more social conscience than Lew Archer.

For several decades, he’s been sleuthing and ruminating over the decline of the quality of life in his native Barcelona. The publishing house Serpent’s Tail has begun treating the U.S. to English-language translations of his adventures. Two more arrive this month in trade paperbacks: “Southern Seas” ($13, 214 pages) and “An Olympic Death” ($11.99, 207 pages).

“Seas,” a 1979 novel, is the more traditional, with Carvalho investigating the murder of an industrialist who had decided to follow the artist Paul Gauguin’s lead and take off for a South Seas paradise. In addition to its engaging hero and his odd little assistant, Biscuter, it has witty dialogue, smartly satiric glimpses of Barcelona’s upper class at play, hard-boiled action, detailed descriptions of Catalan culinary delights, a satisfying conclusion to the case and a poignant and painful ending that dog lovers should probably skip.

“Olympic,” originally published more than a decade later, finds the detective a bit older, more resigned to what he perceives as the declining political and socioeconomic atmosphere of his country and more concerned with his mortality, though it hasn’t slowed down his consumption of food and drink.

Business is brisk. A demanding entrepreneur hires him to follow his promiscuous daughter, and a beautiful Frenchwoman sends him on a quest to locate a lost love. This time, the solutions to the mysteries are less important than Carvalho’s struggles to uncover them. The literary references are more prevalent and more amusing. And the detective’s throwaway lines are sharper than most of his American contemporaries’ key conversations. “A meal can never be allowed to end in indifferent silence,” Carvalho philosophizes, “unless one of the diners happens to have dropped dead.”