Meet Michela, English gangster father, flamenco dancer mother, a hard, uncompromising police officer, operating on the shadier side of the law. In the company of this unorthodox, magnetically compelling character, cult writer Esther García Llovet takes us on a breath-taking, high-speed, anarchic romp through the underbelly of the pearl of the Costa Blanca, Benidorm, on the hunt for Reggie Kray's stolen cigarette lighter. Beyond the sunburn and all-day fry-ups, in casinos, bars that are fronts for money laundering and flashy high society parties, we meet an unforgettable cast of characters English gangsters and Russian mafiosi, chancers, no-hopers, and low-life of all complexions in this unconventional yet literary thriller. With a turn of phrase that always astonishes, an eye for detail that is as forensic as it is cinematic, a sense of humour as dry as a glass of fino, and a wilful desire to break conventional genres, Llovet's book feels like the best of Almodóvar in surreal, novel form.



Eesther García Llovet was born in Málaga in 1963. She moved to Madrid in 1970 to study clinical psychology and film direction, and she has lived there ever since. She started writing in 2000 and has written eight novels, including the three novels of her acclaimed "Snapshot Trilogy of Madrid" (Anagrama). Her works have achieved critical success and cult status for their intense, cinematic style and Chandler-eque realism. García Llovet writes for several different cultural anthologies and periodicals and is a successful photographer.



García Llovet reveals her full talent with this novel - electric, pop, hugely enjoyable and perfectly cinematographic. I want Tarantino to film it.



A love letter to THE city of mass tourism and a noir that is totally committed to originality.



A very well-written and disconcerting book, that is short, elusive and genre breaking, all set beneath "clouds scattered strangely like spelling mistakes.



Washed-up Brits, local lowlifes and a Kray twin's lighter: noir novel Spanish Beauty shines fond light on Benidorm



A bracing fever-dream pulsing to the rhythms of the rotting heart of the Costa Blanca, Spanish Beauty reads like Raymond Chandler purging himself in the depths of a gin hangover



A 'seedy, sun-kissed literary thriller.'