Every Man A King

[from inner dj flap] When her father and stepmother, Antonia, are killed in a road accident, part of Suzanne Cole's legacy is a mystery which has its roots in the aftermath of the bloody Spanish Civil War over twenty years ago. Antonia, she learned, had been married briefly to Carlos, the heir to the de Merito title and the magnificent castle El Regalo del Rey. But then, Carlos, the idealistic revolutionary, disappeared and Antonia, wanting the best for their small son, left the child with the de Merito family and returned to England, assuming her husband had been killed.

When Suzanne first arrives in Toledo, the chances of solving the mystery of Antonia's past seem remote, but as suspicions and dangers close in on her, she realizes that not only does the austere Count de Merito have something to hide, but that someone is prepared to go to any lengths to prevent her from finding Anonia's son.

EVERY MAN A KING is a compelling romantic thriller, set against the backdrop of the rugged Sierra Nevadas in the last years of Franco's reign.

Like her The Lions of Delos, Worboys' Every Man A King falls into the "travel suspense" sub-genre. A kind of mid-century offspring of automobile romances and Golden Age mysteries, the popularity and spread of travel suspense was the product of cheaper air travel and changing norms in the West that made young women both more economically capable, and more confident, about venturing abroad on their own.

The queen of this kind of read was, of course, Mary Stewart. Worboys is definitely in the crowded field of lesser writers, but Every Man A King is still really interesting, not so much for its (pretty run-of-the-mill) story, but for the particular historical moment it unknowingly ends up capturing. Set in southern Spain, it was published in 1975, just months before Franco's death in November of that year. The world it describes is one on the verge of change, at a scale and pace unimaginable to its characters. When Suzanne describes Spain as "a land of contrasts" and decries the poverty she sees in the villages they pass through, her companion, a young nobleman, responds that even giving up their estate "and all we possess" would be pointless: "Spain isn't going to blossom from the Pyrenees to the Sierras in our lifetime, no matter what we do" (194). And yet! This article from the Spanish IR thinktank Real Instituto Elcano shows how much, and how quickly, the transition to democracy would accomplish just that -- between 1975 and 2015, economic output and per capita income in Spain would increase by a factor of more than 10! Astonishing, and this well within the expected lifetime of the MCs, born in 1948 and 1952.

There's also interesting historical detail about the aftermath of the Spanish revolution, life, for economically-privileged families, especially, under Franco's rule, and the regionality of Spanish identity -- which continues, to a variably lesser extent, today. A parador features significantly in the plot, and I'd never heard of these castles-cum-government-hotels with three-night limits and old families still in (sequestered from guests) residence.

As in her Greek-set Lions, Worboys is a careful observer with a nice eye for place and her descriptions of the towns and countryside give a real sense of the texture of the Spanish landscape -- the dust and the olives, and the storms in the high Sierra passes. The castillos and the courtyards, the el Grecos and, of course, the cuisine. Suzanne's lunch in Burgas "churros, those curious curly fingers that tasted of nothing much more than oil and sweet batter, salami slices and fat black olives; wine, and coffee too strong for my palate" (166) sounds just about perfect to me.

A bit of the same sexism we saw in Lions -- "'Good girl', he said absently as though speaking to an obedient dog" (150), etc. But what do you expect?

Overall, an interesting place in an interesting moment and an ok story.