Winter in Madrid - C.J. Sansom

Having read and enjoyed C. J. Sansom's Shardlake trilogy, I was interested to see what would happen when the author moved out of his comfort zone of Tudor England and into another era and country. With that in mind, I took up Winter in Madrid. Set in Spain during the Second World War, it follows a number of different characters as they struggle to get to grips with Franco's Spain. Winter in Madrid seems to divide people quite drastically. Mrs SWSt read it and quite enjoyed it; my mother-in-law struggled to get into it and eventually gave up, and I sat somewhere in the middle, enjoying parts of it, but finding other bits hard going. Certainly, it was not as ...  Read the complete review

“Winter in Madrid” centres around three British men in Spain in the early part of the Second World War, in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. Harry Brett, having been injured at Dunkirk, agrees to go to Spain at the request of the intelligence services that want him to gather information on Sandy Forsyth with whom Brett went to school. Brett is already familiar with Madrid having visited the city twice before; the first time with another old school-friend Bernie Piper and the second time to search for Bernie after he has been reported missing fighting with the International Brigades during the civil war. The novel is essentially a wartime thriller with a ...  Read the complete review