Teresa Solana

Deputy-Inspector Norma Forester is one of the most able investigators working for the Catalan police in Barcelona, although she comes from a rather unusual family. She is the grand-daughter of an Englishman who fought for the International Brigades and was executed at the end of the Spanish civil war and a Catalan leftist from a wealthy family. Her husband is a forensic pathologist, her daughter lives in a squat and is a member of an antisystem group; her mother is a hippy, and her aunt, a nun in a closed order who has exceptional computer skills. Norma also has a lover she sees only sporadically, and an ex- boyfriend who, as well as being her daughter´s biological father, is her husband's brother and is gay. Norma enjoys her family life, but is absorbed in her police work. Now she must investigate the death of Francesc Parellada, a professor of history who was just to about to retire. Norma and her assistant, Gabriel Alonso, deal with the case, but the investigation hardly advances until they relate the death of Parellada with a murder that happened a couple of weeks before and with some memories in which it describes the harsh moral and material atmosphere of the Spanish postwar period. Negres tempestes is an entertaining and vibrant novel that reflects on the weight of the past and the danger of oblivion.