Winter in Madrid by C.J. SansomWinter in Madrid centers on a soldier-turned-spy, Harry Brett, who is stationed in Spain in 1940 and instructed to connect with a former classmate, Sandy Forsyth, who is a shifty character with suspect business ventures and even shadier government ties. Sandy is also pretending to be married to Barbara Clare, who is biding her time with him while looking for her true love, Bernie Piper, a British communist who was believed to be killed in the Spanish Civil War but is actually being held prisoner in a Spanish camp and who is also a former classmate of Sandy and Harry.
With all the intrigue, deception and romance, Winter in Madrid would seem, at first glance, to be a typical action novel--plot-driven and melodramatic. It doesn't take long, though, to realize the characters provide the depth here. Sansom has made them all--even the unscrupulous Sandy--appear genuine and intense. The plot is unpredictable, but it always seems correct. And the ending is absolutely appropriate for the characters in whom you have invested so much throughout the novel.
Sansom has also been scrupulous about the historical details, and there are several actual historical figures who figure prominently in the novel. I didn't know much about this period in Spain's history, and, truthfully, there is still a lot I don't know. The country's particular struggles are often overshadowed by World War II, I suppose. So all this new information was equally fascinating and disturbing.
It's always amazing how cruel humans can be to one another given the power or opportunity. But it's equally amazing how we can also be good to each other and connect through tragedy. Winter in Madrid reminds us of both possibilities.
Favorite quotes...
I found a book in the library...It's amazing what you can find out if you look. Things people want to keep hidden that might come in useful.
It doesn't matter how useful the work you do is, the word bureaucracy always stinks.
Barbara worked on, dealing with exchanges of prisoners and enquiries about missing persons, but side by side with her sense of helplessness in the face of murderous chaos was an inner warmth, a lightness.
Many of the local party members were middle-class, bohemian intellectuals and artists. He knew that for many of them communism was a fad, an act of rebellion, at the same time as he realized he felt more at home with them than the workers...Yet there was still a part of him that felt rootless, lonely, neither proletarian nor bourgeois, a disconnected hybrid.
