Javier Falcon Books In Order

Publication Order of Javier Falcon Books

The Javier Falcon series is a set of detective thriller novels by prolific British crime writer, Robert Wilson. The explosive series of novels is composed of 4 books, published between 2003 and 2009. The main character in all the four novels is a very interesting character, Detective Inspector Javier Falcon. Falcon is introduced as the archetypal cool and dispassionate homicide detective based in Seville Spain. While he is primarily a homicide detective, his work often finds him dealing with far reaching criminal happenings such as unexplained building collapses, terrorist bombings, corruption and political conspiracies. As the Inspector goes about his routine investigations of murders in his hometown of Seville, he also has to deal with his own demons. Even though dealing with such heavy psychological stresses would have broken any other man, they seem to strengthen Inspector Javier Falcon’s resolve to fight the Russian Mafia, Islamic terrorism, and political corruption. Falcon is a stubborn but intrepid investigator that will go to any lengths to get to the bottom of a murder mystery. Unlike other detectives that rely on persistence and odd luck, he has an astute eye for noticing the minutiae that helps him uncover important clues to solve his cases time and again. Working with characters that are as deeply flawed if not more flawed than himself, the detective has to deal with imminent violence, ambiguous clues, and even more deaths in the course of his investigations.

The Javier Falcon series is among the most popular of novels ever written by a British crime author. As the books became even more popular, they came to the attention of audiences across the Atlantic, where the second novel in the series, The Silent and the Damned was published as Vanished Hands for American readers. What made the novels so popular is that Robert Wilson takes his time to research the culture, even living in it before writing his novels. This is evident in the in perfect and compelling insights that are found in all the Javier Falconer novels. Such attention to detail and compelling narratives soon made the novels achieve cult status all over the world, and established Wilson one of the top crime fiction writers of the last two decades. The first novel of the series, The Blind Man of Seville was published in 2003 to critical acclaim and widespread popularity. The novel would be shortlisted for the Gold Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year in the same year. In 2012, it was adapted into a television series by Sky Television starring Marton Csokas as Falcon. The second novel, The Silent and the Damned went on to win the 2006 Best European Crime Novel in the Gumshoe Awards. The January Magazine selected the novel as one of the top crime fiction novels of 2004.

The author describes Detective Inspector Javier Falcon as a stubborn police officer who does not know how to quit. Faced with tremendous psychological problems from witnessing gruesome murders in his line of work, his psychological problems just keep on mounting in tandem with the complexity of his cases. He does not seem to have much of a social life with his best friend Yacoub Diour his only confidant. He is divorced from his wife Consuelo for about five years now, though he is always trying to reignite the old flame. Even as Javier is a cold and calculating detective, he seems to have a big and compassionate heart when he is dealing with the friends and relatives of homicide victims in a world that has seemingly lost such values. Despite the fact that he is fatally flawed and tattered by the psychological stress of the job, he never loses the curiosity that makes a good detective. His approach to solving mystery murders is to find evidence (at which he is very good) rather than rely on intelligence reports. Surprisingly, this results in a very high success rate, though it leads to constant conflict with the agencies that he works with, as they for the most part prefer the intelligence route.

The Blind Man of Seville is the first novel in the Javier Falcon series. A leading restaurateur is found dead in his house, gagged, and bound in front of his TV during the Semanta Santa, the Holy Week in Seville, a time of Easter processions and passion. Forced to watch insufferable images, the dead man apparently killed himself to get away from it all. While a normally unflustered and cool detective in the face of the most ghastly of homicides, the scene before Falcon makes him recoil in fear. What could be so terrible as to make a man inflict such horrible wounds on himself? His investigations soon have him digging through his own sordid past and the tell-all journal ramblings of his late father. The dead man’s past and the revelations in his father’s journals muddle up Falcon’s memory even further, even as more killings now lead him towards a terrifying revelation. He soon acknowledges that the investigation is not only about finding justice for a seemingly omniscient killer, but also a search for his own identity.

The Silent and the Damned is the second novel of the Javier Falcon series of novels. It sees Falcon called in to investigate a double suicide in an affluent part of town where the residents like to keep their secrets well hidden. The life of seven-year-old Mario Vega changes in an instant when he finds his mother suffocated in an upstairs bed and his father dead on the kitchen floor. While initially bearing all the hallmarks of a suicide pact, Inspector Javier Falcon thinks there may be something more to the curious case, when he discovers a crumpled suicide note on the deceased man. He is soon proved right when as soon as he is making headway in his investigation, than the Russian Mafia warn him to keep off or else… His investigation also includes Vega’s neighbors: a famous actor with a son in prison and an American couple with a criminal past. On the opposite side is Consuelo Jimenez who was once arrested on suspicion of murdering her husband. Hardly two days later, a senior police officer, and another nondescript man are found dead in the neighborhood, both suspected suicides. It is now up to Javier Falcon to put his exceptional detective powers to the test to find out how the homicides are connected and if indeed, they are suicides. The major twist is that these murders have something to do with a terrible secret that Vega had hidden from his family and friends for many years.

One Response to “Javier Falcon”

1. Jill: 3 years ago

   About to reread this series of books for the 2nd time. I keep the books I love so I can do this. I want to be whisked back to Spain where I lived many years ago!
   Thanks for the memories and the brilliant books!

   Reply