THE Jose Carlos Somotha he comes from Spain, he is a psychiatrist and by common confession he has impressively renewed the Spanish detective novel. Born in 1959 in Havana, Cuba, Somotha has been living in Madrid for many years and most of his novels have been translated into many languages, while he is also particularly popular in Greece.

Rationality, the irrational and its pagan roots, death, the relationship of art with reality and with everyday experience, the integration of the positive sciences in the events of the detective plot, but also the dialogue with philosophy or with the literature of ideas are just some of the elements of Somotha’s books and “Study in Black”, which is published in a translation by Christina Theodoropoulou from Pataki publications, takes us to Victorian England in 1882, specifically to London and Southsea, the coastal city of Portsmouth in the British south, where we will meet her Anne McCurry, a nurse specializing in the mentally ill. The Spanish novelist dissects with great fluency and in a very lively atmosphere the era of the first industrial revolution both in the capital and in Southsea: the harsh working conditions, the neighborhoods of poverty and vagrancy or the theater haunts and their illegal performances (with daring texts and a provocative spectacle), highlighting the plight of women within a society dotted by economic inequalities, but also by the daily violence of men, which is considered almost a natural state.

In such a society he was born Sherlock Holmesthe still-famous literary hero of Arthur Conan Dolewho made his first appearance in the 1887 novel Study in Red, a title which Somotha meaningfully paraphrases in his own novel.

And Anne, however, evokes Conan Dole since she looks like a stand-in for the Doctor Watson, who always accompanies Sherlock Holmes, as a watchful guard and friend, in his investigations. Anne is clearly exposed to the wild behavior of her London lover, who works on the ships and exploits her financially, constantly abusing her. So she undertakes, coming from London and in order to escape from his brutal love embrace Robertthe care of the mysterious “Mr. X”, who introduces her together with the young doctor Doyle in the exciting game of unraveling a series of murders of small-town marginals.

Somotha invents Sherlock Holmes on behalf of “Mr. X”, who uses his square logic to solve the mystery of serial killers with a devoted accomplice Anne (although the relationship between them will be slow to develop) and a devoted assistant of the young Conan Dole, who begins to discover his future fictional character in the logical abilities and power of thought of Southsea’s helpless madman. The rebirth of Sherlock Holmes in a modern detective novel from Spain has multiple sides: “Mr. X” shows with his paranoia another side of Sherlock Holmes (the fertile intersection of reason and madness), Anne sheds light, as a female Watson , in the gender issues of the 19th century and Conan Dole will take up again with his various transformations (the rules of detective fiction do not allow us to say more) from the beginning the books that made him famous around the globe.

I want to emphasize the role of illegal theatrical scenes in the plot, as Somotha turns the theater (its ability to set scenes and assign roles) to the center of a novel that tirelessly plays with the being and appearance of real life or with the importance of clothing in literature. The unprotected children for whom “Mr. X” is fighting for also claim special weight, which may refer to the orphans of “Oliver Twist” (1838), the novel by Charles Dickens, which focused on the class relations of the highly classed Victorian England. . If we add the textured and exquisitely crafted characters (psychosocial portraits with prismatic depth and multiple colors), then we will immediately understand why Somotha is a source of revitalization for the crime novel in Spain.