Tomás Nevinson

Summary: "From Spain's most acclaimed writer, a novel about a charismatic half-Spanish, half-English man who is recruited by British intelligence. Thou shalt not kill. But, as our narrator admits, "Killing is not so extreme or so difficult or unjust if you know who you are killing, what crimes he has committed or announced he is going to commit, how many evils you would save people from, how many innocent lives would be preserved in exchange . . ." The British Embassy, Madrid, 1997. Against his better judgment, Tomás Nevinson re-enters the Secret Service and is sent to a small town to identify a suspect behind several deadly terrorist attacks carried out by the IRA and ETA. Nevinson must decide which of three women is the mastermind and kill her before it's too late. The assignment smacks of his former boss Bertram Tupra and his questionable methods-but Nevinson can't see a way out. Tomás Nevinson is the story of a man who has stretched the limits of what a person can bear, but then is asked to go beyond them. At once a gripping spy narrative and a profound reflection on evil and morality and doubt, it is a chilling, labyrinthine novel that expands Javier Marías's fascinating fictional universe"--