A Niche for Marilyn (144 pages) is the first in a series of crime novels featuring the private detective Frank Soutelo, who is based in Los Angeles, but has Galician ancestry. It received one of the most prestigious fiction awards in Galicia, the García Barros, and was first published in 2002.

There is a short introduction before the narrative proper begins. Frank introduces himself. His real name is Paco, but his professional name is Frank Soutelo, ‘Soutelo’ after the name of his father’s village in Galicia. He is nicknamed ‘Big Frank’ because of his physique. His father left Galicia in 1936, at the start of the Spanish Civil War, and travelled to America via France and Mexico. He soon joined the New York Police Department as a foot patrol officer and was a popular figure around town. He married a woman whose family was from Muros, also in Galicia. Frank also joined the police force, but preferred to relocate to Los Angeles because of the climate and the proximity to Hollywood. He left the police force after a while and became a private detective. His favourite restaurant is The Peirao, run by a friend of his, Beni, whose family is from Cambados and who learned how to cook in Galicia. Frank is a minor celebrity, and a book of his memoirs, ghost-written and detailing aspects of his cases, has been published.

Hollywood boasts that it has as many stars in the ground as there are in the sky. For this reason, it seems there is a lucrative business in obtaining famous cadavers. A special squad has been set up in Los Angeles, the cadaver collectors’ centre of operations, to stop this trafficking in dead bodies. They have been involved in some high-profile cases, for example stopping a cell of sentimental radicals returning the corpse of Eva Perón to Argentina in pursuit of their political ambitions, or foiling a plan to sell Lenin’s mummy to an oil boss in Africa. One of the places these traffickers like to steal bodies is Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles, because of the film stars that are buried there.

Frank receives a visit in his office from a chauffeur named Boris, who takes him in a spanking white Rolls Royce to see an elderly lady named Tara Colbert. Tara was friends with Marilyn Monroe and one of the few people to receive a phone call from her on the night of her death and also to attend her funeral. She promised to look after her grave, to keep it tidy and to stock it with flowers, but it turns out that Marilyn’s body has gone missing and she wants Frank to find it. She pays him $25,000 in advance.

Tara’s true intention is to get hold of Marilyn’s corpse for herself. Her stepfather was a gravedigger and used to abuse the corpses in his home town, and also Tara herself. When her stepfather died, she abandoned her mother and moved to Hollywood, where she lived off the attraction of her body, occasionally visited cemeteries herself, started acting in movies and married a film producer by the name of Colbert. When he died, she inherited a large fortune, which enabled her to collect famous corpses, but the one she really wanted – Marilyn’s – had so far eluded her. Frank was a means to an end, nothing more.

Frank’s first action is to visit Marilyn’s grave in Westwood Memorial Park. He takes out his penknife to see if the slab on top of the grave has been tampered with, but is interrupted by someone who claims to be a watchman by the name of Tabasco. Frank poses as a freelance journalist investigating the life of Joe DiMaggio, the baseball player and Marilyn’s second husband. He notices that the plaque on Marilyn’s grave has been moved. Frank meets up with an old colleague from the police force and invites him to lunch at The Peirao. The colleague hands him a large file on necrophiliacs and advises him to focus on three of these ‘high-class loonies’, two of whom are easy to locate, while for the third there is very little current information. Frank works out that the third is Tara Colbert and decides to investigate the first two names on the list.

Frank visits the first name on the list, Bruce De Bont, a theatre actor and film producer who lives in a mansion on the Pacific coast. He poses as a wealthy editor of expensive books and claims to be publishing a monograph on James Dean, whose corpse Bruce De Bont was reputed to have stolen. It turns out he and James Dean had been good friends and, when he heard James Dean’s corpse had been stolen, he did what he could to get it back and ended up being accused of the theft. Frank decides to rule him out for the time being.

Tabasco is a Latino, the son of Mexican immigrants, and feels nostalgia for the celebrations for the Mexican Day of the Dead when he walks around the cemetery. He is suspicious of Frank and doesn’t believe his story about being a journalist. He resolves to get to the bottom of the matter and find out what he really wants. Frank visits the second name on the list, Sugar Jones, a wealthy undertaker. He professes to be a private detective working for a client who would like to acquire the body of Rudolph Valentino. He says he feels distaste for these collectors of dead bodies, but is in it for the money. Sugar Jones expresses admiration for people who have a delicate preference for lifeless bodies and are prepared to look after corpses in the privacy of their homes. Frank goes to visit Tabasco in the cemetery. They arrange to have lunch together, so they can share information.

Sugar Jones attended various elite private schools in Louisiana, at the last of which he acquired an interest in the cult of the dead and in preparing corpses. As a child, he practised on insects, mice and dogs, which he would kill in order to prepare them for burial in the back garden of his family’s estate. He had to stop when the local residents became suspicious. He eventually moved to Hollywood to set up a funeral parlour where select cadavers would be given the treatment he felt they deserved. He wants to know how Frank knew to come to him and why he had brought up the business of Valentino, so he sends a couple of thugs to keep an eye on him.

Frank and Tabasco meet up for lunch. It turns out Tabasco works for a security firm and his current remit is to keep an eye on people in Memorial Park. Frank explains that he’s been given the job of finding Marilyn’s body. Tabasco shows him a list of graves that are empty and the next day, in the cemetery, shares with him some footage of two guys hanging around Marilyn’s grave in the middle of the night. Frank recognizes them as Tara Colbert’s chauffeur and butler. They are manipulating a scanner to see if the grave is empty. Sugar Jones’ thugs learn that he’s had lunch with Tabasco and then gone with him to a special building in the cemetery, but when they return later on to question the guard, they find it’s a different guard and get a severe ticking-off from Sugar.

Frank goes to report on the case to Tara Colbert. He says he’s making progress and expects to have the body soon, but wants to be paid an extra $100,000. Tara accepts this. On his return to his office, Frank finds that Sugar and his two thugs are waiting for him. Sugar wants to know who he’s working for and, when Frank tells him it’s Tara Colbert and she is after Marilyn’s body, he smiles. Marilyn’s body has been missing for a while and they haven’t been able to find it. Tara is his main competitor on the Pacific coast, but the difference between them is that she only collects famous cadavers, whereas he sells them as well, as he did in the past with Valentino. Frank takes his secretary, Pat, out for lunch at The Peirao to help her get over the shock of Sugar’s visit and this business with the corpses. Pat is pretty, Galician by way of her grandfather, fluent in several languages and discreet. They have had an encounter in the past, but Frank isn’t planning to revisit that territory. It turns out Pat has a few other strings to her bow – a certificate in self-defence, a solid knowledge of weapons and ballistics – but she didn’t let on when she was given the job because she realized Frank had to be the star of the show. The two of them have had a fling, but after that Frank went back to acting distant – he’s already been married and seems unwilling to commit to a relationship. Pat, however, is fatally attracted to him and is prepared to bide her time, despite the age difference between them (she is not yet thirty, Frank is around fifty).

Frank and Tabasco come up with a plan: they leave Los Angeles and head to a small border town next to Mexico, where they ransack the grave of a woman to make it look like they have recovered Marilyn’s remains. It will be Tabasco’s job to throw in a pair of high heels and a dress from the time of Marilyn’s death and to dye the hair so the corpse looks authentic. If Tara Colbert wants to check the body with her scanner, they will pretend to be in a hurry. Frank goes to inform Tara that they have the body. She is deliriously happy and can’t wait to get her hands on the merchandise. Frank is suspicious because when he leaves, nobody accompanies him to the exit. The plan is to take the body to Tara’s mansion the next day, after dark, in the van of a fake bakery, hidden in amongst the loaves and rolls. Frank and Tabasco will have their weapons with them. As soon as they deliver the coffin, they will get paid and leave.

They arrive at Tara’s mansion at 3 a.m. Two attendants take the body in through a back door and an expert confirms that the remains are Marilyn’s. Frank is paid and is about to leave when Sugar turns up with a small army of thugs, demanding Marilyn’s body. There is a shoot-out, during which Frank and Tabasco escape down to the basement, which resembles a mausoleum with a small temple at its head and six openings, five of which contains the remains of other bodies. The sixth has obviously been kept for Marilyn. Tara then appears and explains that this is her tomb. She tells Boris to set the ball rolling. There is a loud explosion and the basement catches fire. Frank and Tabasco escape upstairs and make off with the money.

The story of the fire at Tara Colbert’s mansion is headline news the next day, some people claiming it was a ritual suicide, others saying Tara Colbert had gone crazy and built herself a spaceship with separate compartments. Frank and Tabasco meet up in the cemetery to divide the money between them. As Frank is leaving, Tabasco takes him to the part of the cemetery where ordinary people are buried and shows him a grave with the name of ‘Norma Jean Baker’. It turns out they suspected Marilyn’s grave would be ransacked and so they had taken the precaution of moving her body. Frank takes the rest of the day off, but not before sending Pat a dozen roses.

A few days later, Frank and Tabasco meet up for lunch at The Peirao. Frank is taken aback to learn that Tabasco is a detective in the special squad set up to combat cadaver contraband. The L.A. police fed Frank information about Tara Colbert, Bruce De Bont and Sugar Jones to see if he could help them narrow down the list of suspects in the case. They talk about their lives and the homesickness they feel for the places their families are from, Galicia and Mexico. Tabasco explains he hasn’t mentioned the money in his report and wants to give Frank back his share, but Frank insists he keep it and use it to help his relatives in Mexico. They part as good friends. In the car, Frank notices a large black envelope, which contains a card with the following words in gold lettering: ‘We’ll meet again, be careful. Sugar Jones.’ He bursts out laughing.

This is a fun and entertaining narrative by one of Galicia’s leading writers of crime fiction. The series of detective novels starring Frank Soutelo is well known in Galicia and currently comprises seven titles, which means there is the potential to publish more than one novel in another language. Frank Soutelo is laid back, a hard man on the outside, but with a soft centre. He feels strong ties to the land of his ancestors, and indeed some of the novels in the series are set in Galicia. There is also the love interest involving his secretary, Pat, and whether they will get together. This case, involving necrophilia, is an unusual one, but is handled in a humorous and light-handed manner. It is also curious because it deals with some of Hollywood’s stars, Marilyn Monroe, Rudolph Valentino and others. This first novel in the series won the author one of the three main fiction awards in Galicia, the García Barros, in 2002. It is to be hoped the series will continue.

Synopsis © Jonathan Dunne