The Summer of Dead Toys

International crime fiction from Spain set over a stifling summer in Barcelona, introducing Inspector Hector Salgado. For fans of Jo Nesbo

A welcome corrective to snow-blindness from too much Nordic noir... excellent characterisation, a sympathetic and engaging protagonist and plenty of plot twists with a cliff hanger ending that sets things up nicely for the next in the series

Evokes the master of Barcelona-set narrative, Carlos Ruiz Zafon... For all his storytelling skills, Hill’s real achievement is in the creation of an idiosyncratic new character, Salgado... a series to watch

A blast of hot air through the current frozen Nordic crime-writing landscape

Human trafficking, voodoo, the corruption of wealth and power, and sharp psychological insight. Don't miss

Antonio Hill studied pyschology and lives in Barcelona. He is a professional translator of English-language fiction into Spanish and speaks fluent English. The Summer of Dead Toys is the first in a detective series set in Barcelona, introducing Inspector Salgado and was a major best seller in Spain. It is translated into fifteen languages.The second in the series, The Good Suicides, comes out in Doubleday hb in summer 2013.

'Evokes the master of Barcelona-set narrative, Carlos Ruiz Zafon' Independent 
 
When the death of a young witness in a case of human trafficking and voodoo provokes the normally calm Inspector Salgado to beat someone up, he is swiftly removed from the project. Instead, he is sent to investigate a teenager's fall to his death in one of Barcelona's uptown areas. 
As Salgado begins to uncover the inconvenient truths behind the city's most powerful families, two seemingly unsolvable cases are set to implode under the hot Barcelona sun.

Antonio Hill

Laura McGloughlin

Young, Free and . . . Dead 
 
Senior staff at Alemany Cosmetics come home with a secret after a team-building course in a remote country house. Now they are committing suicide, one by one. Soon, they may all be dead. Each has received a photo from an anonymous sender showing dogs hanging dead from a tree near the farm. 
 
 Deciphering the personalities of these youthful executives and their power structures, Inspector Salgado has his own ways of making them speak. But Barcelona is hunkering down for an unusually cold spell. Can Salgado break the ice before it's too late?

Antonio Hill

Praise for The Good Suicides

Intelligent and appealing

Books by Antonio Hill

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter