Dickens & Clot Investigations Ltd, a detective agency in a waterlogged, semi-buried Madrid of the near future, has a couple of unusual specialities: helping distraught authors and taking on Manex Chopeitia. The authors are frantically in search of characters who've quit the page and assumed a life of their own; Manex Chopeitia is the legendary Big Brother of the genetic-engineering company that rules over both the capital and the destiny of the US-Iberian Federation.
Carlos Clot - a paunchy, sartorially inept and alcoholic private eye - cycles, boats and gumshoes his way around a drug- and drink-sodden metropolis. With the help of a cowboy sidekick, on the loose from an unfinished manuscript, Carlos is on a personal quest to put some dodgy people (both 'real' and 'fictional') in their place.
`The melancholic private eye Carlos Clot is the new Spanish anti-hero... one of the funniest and most provocative novels of the last few years. Reig has managed to fill this crazy novel with all you need: short and very sweet' El Pais
Born in Asturias in 1963, Rafael Reig studied
Philosophy and Humanities in Madrid and later
in New York, where he wrote his PhD thesis on
19th-century literary depictions of the prostitute.
Today Reig combines university teaching with
his writing and editing activities. His latest novel
is Guapa de cara (`A Pretty Face') published in
Spain in 2004: he lives in Madrid.