Spanish Beauty

A thriller with dark comedic elements.

Michela is a tough, flawed, attractive, fiercely independent, half-Spanish and half- English Police Detective based in Benidorm. She thrives on back handers, blackmail and bullying her network of informers—pick pockets, buskers and reluctant lovers —as well as on help from her minders, the East End mobsters who arrived on this particular stretch of coast back in the 70s.While following her day-to-day adventures, we soon realize she has a plan. For unresolved personal reasons that go back to her troubled childhood and that gradually come to light throughout the novel, an obsession clouds her usually cold, level-headed judgement: getting her hands on an object that once belonged to Ronnie Kray (of the infamous Kray twins), his lighter. Michela maneuvers and manipulates the small cast of colorful characters at all times, and the plot comes to a head in a standoff with the Russian Mafia.