Winter in Madrid
Macmillan(January 2006)
It is 1940. The Spanish Civil War is over, and Madrid lies ruined, its people starving, while the Germans continue their relentless march through Europe. And as Britain stands alone, General Franco considers whether to abandon neutrality and enter the war. Into this uncertain world comes Harry Brett, ex-public schoolboy, traumatised veteran of Dunkirk and, now, reluctant spy for the British Secret Service. Sent to gain the confidence of Sandy Forsyth, an old schoolfriend turned shady Madrid businessman, he finds himself involved in a dangerous game - and surrounded by memories. Meanwhile Sandy's girlfriend, ex-Red Cross nurse Barbara Clare, is engaged on a secret mission of her own - to find her former lover Bernie Piper, whose passion for the Communist cause led him into the International Brigades, and who vanished on the bloody battlefields of the Jarama.
In WINTER IN MADRID – as in DISSOLUTION and DARK FIRE – C.J. Sansom brilliantly conjures with delicate tipping points in history, using their complexities to throw his characters into morally fraught situations. The result is a gripping novel of spies, greed and betrayal.
"WINTER IN MADRID certainly contains all the elements of an exciting romantic thriller, but CJ Sansom's real strength lies in an almost uncanny ability to create a sense of time and place... unsentimental and utterly fascinating... a tense, literate page-turner full of twists, authentic details and real pathos: a superb achievement." -- The Guardian
"Now here's a wonderful curiosity: a convincing and moving historical novel, which is also an exciting thriller" -- Sunday Times
"Sansom's action-packed thriller is a classic tale of old loyalties pitched against new ideologies. Its portrait of murderous corruption, ranging from the Monarchists and Falangists in the government to the diplomats at the British Embassy, shows Franco's Madrid to have been even murkier than Harry Lime's Vienna." -- Michael Arditti, Daily Mail
"If you like Sebastian Faulkes and Carlow Ruiz Zafon, you'll love this" -- Daily Express
“Sansom adroitly draws together the disparate strands of his ambitious saga. His non-pareil evocations of time and place anchor his characters with satisfying precision. Various literary ghosts haunt this novel. There are touches reminiscent of Graham Greene [and] Hemingway’s here too, in the terse prose, but Sansom transfigures his sources into a moral universe very much his own.” -- Barry Forshaw, The Independent.
“It is a bold author who, having found acclaim with two historical novels firmly grounded in a particular period, sets his third novel in a entirely different place some 500 years later -- but that is what C.J. Sansom has done, and he has pulled it off magnificently . . . Winter in Madrid shares with [Sansom’s first two novels] the author’s enviable ability to land his readers in an alien world, yet make them feel entirely at home . . . In Sansom’s capable hands, story, characters and that indefinable spirit of place meld and twist into a narrative that grips the reader throughout its 500-plus pages . . . weaving together hard facts with romantic fiction - his bleak winter thriller chills to the bone.” -- Literary Review
"WINTER IN MADRID demonstrates that Sansom cannot easily be pigeonholed. The novel subtly mixes elements of different genres: part thriller, part romance, and part historical drama... The world of post civil-war Madrid is finely and minutely observed, giving the entire novel a remarkable sense of place... A well-crafted and entertaining piece of fiction." -- Sunday Express
"I was engrossed by every one of this historical thriller's 500 pages. A superb adventure and a vibrant picture of Spain during and after the Civil War" -- Morning Star
"As a portrait of a traumatized city, wrapped in silence because speech was dangerous, WINTER IN MADRID is a remarkable achievement" -- Frances Lannon, Times Literary Supplement
"Sansom paints a terrifying picture [of Madrid]... There are shades of Julian Mitchell's ANOTHER COUNTRY in the portrayal of public-school ideological rebellion, and throughout Sansom offers an intriguing and equivocal vision of a country in ideological turmoil." -- Sunday Telegraph
“[A] splendid novel… Sansom's descriptive powers, particularly when introducing a change in setting or when portraying winter weather conditions, are quite remarkable… Suspenseful and surprising… It comes as no surprise to learn that Sansom's novel spent month after month on London's best-seller lists.” – Philadelphia Inquirer
"Sansom powerfully conjures up a destitute Madrid that has been bled not only of people but also of color… riveting." -- Boston Globe
Foreign rights have been sold in Denmark, Holland, Portugal, Serbia, Norway, Finland, Turkey, Romania, Spain, the Czech Republic, France, Israel, Italy, Bulgaria, Poland, Brazil and the USA.
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