El enredo de la bolsa y la vida - Eduardo Mendoza

Eduardo Mendoza never disappoints with the comic possibilities of his protagonist of El misterio de la cripta embrujada, El laberinto de las acietunas and La aventura del tocador de señoras and with the peculiarities of Barcelona and its inhabitants, as it tries to keep up in its own unique way with modernisation, globalisation and, in the case of El enredo de la bolsa y la vida, with the economic downturn and international terrorism. 

The unnamed and unfortunate former asylum inmate is trying to keep to the straight and narrow, but it's proving difficult during the global economic crisis. His ladies' hairdressing business in a less than salubrious part of Barcelona isn't doing as much business as the Chinese variety market across the street and the bank are taking all his money. A former fellow inmate and handsome Tony Curtis lookalike Rómulo el Guapo has a proposition for him but despite his current predicament, he knows enough about his friend's previous escapade at a bank not to get involved. 

Trouble nevertheless comes to his hairdressing shop door (well, no one else does) in the unassuming form of the oddly nicknamed 13 year old Quesito, who reports that Rómulo, who was a close friend of her mother, has disappeared. With a mixture of innocent guile that belies the stupidity of his methods, our narrator inevitably gets himself involved in he doesn't quite know what or why, in a kind of Mediterranean noir involving 'mujeres fatales', performing street entertainers, a yoga swami, Chinese bazaars and restaurants, and a plan to assassinate a prominent German politician.

El enredo de la bolsa y la vida is perhaps not as consistently funny as some of the previous adventures, but it still has some hilarious situations and astute observations about the absurdity of life in the time of economic crisis. Some of those relate to very local concerns and in-joke satire of politics in Barcelona and its 'General Tat', but there are loads of laugh out loud moments in Mendoza’s writing and humour and his way of elaborating a silly plot into unexpected areas in a hugely entertaining and engaging way.