Johanna Thomas Corr reviews Spanish Beauty in The Times

A coastline of skyscrapers and neon palm trees. Casinos that never close. Russians looking for hedonism and leathery Brits randy for sun. Tattoos. Gangsters. Vomit. Corpses in the sea. 

Insert into this scene a corrupt cop wearing a crochet bikini top and you have Esther García Llovet’s Benidorm noir. It’s a bit seedy, a bit hard-boiled, a bit pulpy, and you can just about detect the influence of the great Chilean postmodernist Roberto Bolaño. But it comes out more like the ITV sitcom Benidorm — if it was given a gritty makeover and a bad girl heroine. 

García Llovet, the 61-year-old author from Madrid, casts an affectionate eye over the “cheap culture” of the Costa Blanca resort, where Manchester United fans drink beer for breakfastunder a sky “the colour of Fanta”. Michela McKay is a chain-smoking, vermouth-swilling Policía Nacional officer on a quest for a Dunhill cigarette lighter that once belonged to Reggie Kray. She wants to give it back to her estranged father, Kyle, once an English professor of history, who met her Spanish mother when he came to Benidorm to write a book about gangsters. The trail eventually leads her to some gloomy Russians whom she tries blackmailing by tasering and drugging their right-hand man then dumping him on a boat at sea along with two kilos of cooked ham and a dozen oranges.