An accomplished debut mystery set in the high-stakes and decidedly murky world of bullfighting in Valencia, Spain"Either you kill the bull, or the bull kills you." Chief Inspector Max Cámara thinks in proverbs,and he hates one thing above all: bullfighting. One hot afternoon in Valencia, however, he has to stand in for his boss, judging a festival corrida starring Spain's most famous young matador. That night, he is back in the bullring, and what he finds on the blood-stained sand shocks the city of Valencia to its core. Cámara is roped into investigating a grisly murder while dealing with violent shadows from his own past, as well as confronting the suspiciousness of the bullfighting community and the stonewalling of local politicians in full electoral campaign. To top it all, Fallas, the loudest fiesta in the country, has just got underway. For Cámara, it seems his problems have only just begun...

Having pursued a conventional enough path through school and university, Jason Webster was all set to enter the world of academe as a profession. But when his aloof Florentine girlfriend of some years dumped him unceremoniously, he found himself at a crossroads. Abandoning the world of libraries and the future he had always imagined for himself, he headed off instead for Spain in search of duende, the intense emotional state -- part ecstasy, part desperation -- so intrinsic to flamenco. Duende is an account of his years spent in Spain feeding his obsessive interest in flamenco: he subjects himself to the tyranny of his guitar teacher, practising for hours on end until his fingers bleed; he becomes involved in a passionate affair with Lola, a flamenco dancer (and older woman) married to the gun-toting Vicente, only to flee Alicante in fear of his life; in Madrid, he falls in with Gypsies and meets the imperious Jesús. Joining their dislocated, cocaine-fuelled world, stealing cars...

It is Christmas day, and Max Cámara has a hangover. He's due in his hometown of Albacete for lunch with his grandfather Hilario, but instead he's called out to a local nightclub where things have gone horribly wrong. There, it's still very much the morning after the night before. Cámara must untangle a tragic truth from a cast of extraordinary nativity characters, fresh from a performance the likes of which he's never come across before.'A series that just gets better and better. Each Max Cámara novel is a treat to savour' Mark Billingham 'conveys a wonderful sense of Spain... [Webster] does for the country what Michael Dibdin did for Italy' Geoffrey Wansell, Daily Mail'All great cities need a fictional cop, and now Valencia has one of the very best in Jason Webster's dope smoking Chief Inspector Max Cámara. Step into his world of the corrida, corruption, and clouds of saffron and you'll be hooked. But if he offers you a...

After twelve years in Spain, Jason Webster had developed a deep love for his adopted homeland; his life there seemed complete. But when he and his Spanish wife moved into an idyllic old farmhouse in the mountains north of Valencia, by chance he found an unmarked mass grave from the Spanish Civil War on his doorstep.Spurred to investigate the history of the Civil War, a topic many of his Spanish friends still seemed to treat as taboo, he began to uncover a darker side to the country. Witness to a brutal fist-fight sponsored by remnants of Franco's Falangists, arrested and threatened by the police in the former HQ of the Spanish Foreign Legion, sheltered by a beautiful transvestite, shunned by locals, haunted by ghosts and finally robbed of his identity, Webster encountered a legacy of cruelty and violence that seems to linger on seventy years after the bloody events of that war.As in Webster's previous books, Duende and Andalus, ¡Guerra!...

This is a romantic, utterly alluring leap into Spanish sunshine, remote mountains and rural life. Jason Webster had lived in Spain for several years before he and his partner, the flamenco dancer Salud, decided to buy a deserted farmhouse clinging to the side of a steep valley in the eastern province of Castellón, near the sacred peak of Penaglosa. With help from local farmers -- and from a twelfth-century Moorish book on gardening -- Jason set about creating his dream. He had never farmed before, and knew nothing of plants, but slowly he and Salud cleared the land, planted and harvested their olives, raised the healing herbs they learned about from local people, set up bee-hives and nurtured precious, expensive truffles, the black gold of the region. And beyond all this they started to fulfil another vision, bringing the native trees back to the cliffs ravaged by fire.At the same time they became drawn into the life of the valley: this is a book rich with characters as well...

A Death in Valencia is the electrifying second Max Cámara Valencian crime novel from Jason Webster, author of Or the Bull Kills You. Max Cámara is feeling low. Ominous cracks have appeared in the walls of his flat; the body of a well-known paella chef has been washed up on the beach; there are rows and threats about abortion clinics in anticipation of the Pope's visit to Valencia; and Town Hall officials are set on demolishing El Cabanyal, the colorful fisherman's quarter on Valencia's seafront. As Cámara untangles these threads, he stumbles into a web of corruption and violence, uncovering deep animosities and hidden secrets, and forcing him to question his own doubts and desires. This is the second novel in Webster's dark and witty series, following his widely praised debut, Or the Bull Kills You. The plot is fast and twisting, the scene-setting vivid, and the atmosphere powerfully authentic. Starring the determined...

In the hills above Valencia is a notorious nightclub called Sunset. When its larger-than-life owner, Jose Luis, dies suddenly, everyone assumes it was a heart-attack. Perfectly understandable for a man of his age, size and lifestyle. Meanwhile, all is not well for Max Cámara at HQ. His new boss, Rita Hernández, has it in for him and his idiosyncratic methods. He must abandon a complex investigation into home-grown extremism to check out what looks like a routine death at Sunset. But an anonymous phone-call suggests otherwise...Back in the city, Max's journalist girlfriend Alicia is working on a lead that could turn out to be the story of her career. How her own investigation connects with Max's at Sunset, and an unholy network of drug dealers, priests and shady officials protecting a dark government secret, will place both their lives in jeopardy and push everything to the very edge

Spain is corrupt and on the brink of collapse.The king is ill, banks are closing, hospitals are in chaos, homes are lost, demonstrators riot and rightwing thugs patrol the street. The tunnels beneath the streets are at once a refuge and a source of anger. And as the blood flows Cámara roars in on his motorbike...Cámara is back in Valencia and in the old police headquarters the mood is tense as the chief hunts for cuts – who will go, Cámara or his friend Torres? The two men are flung into action investigating the suicide of an ex- bank clerk and the brutal murder of a young American woman. As the city erupts around them, their case takes them into the heart of the trouble.

As Islam and the West prepare to clash once again, Jason Webster embarks on a quest to discover Spain's hidden Moorish legacy and lift the lid on a country once forged by both Muslims and Christians. He meets Zine, a young illegal immigrant from Morocco, a twenty-first century Moor, lured over with the promise of a job but exploited as a slave labourer on a fruit farm. Jason's life is threatened as he investigates the agricultural gulag, Zine rescues him, and the unlikely pair of writer and desperado take off on a rollercoaster ride through Andalucía. While Jason unveils the neglected Arab ancestry of modern Spain -- apparent in its food, language, people and culture -- Zine sets out on his own parallel quest, a one-man peace mission to resolve Muslim--Christian tensions by proving irresistible to Spanish señoritas.