Hemingway Cutthroat

Set in civil war–torn Spain in 1937, Atkinson’s solid sequel to 2009’s Hemingway Deadlights finds the celebrated author feeling like “a fraud, a three-dollar bill, a charlatan everyone treated like a messiah.” With the occasional help of fellow writer John Dos Passos, Hemingway looks into the execution of José Robles, a medical volunteer and accused Marxist spy, with whom he was acquainted years earlier in Italy, after Robles’s body lies in the hills outside Valencia for more than three weeks before it’s discovered. Hemingway’s base in Madrid, the hectic Hotel Florida, sees the likes of Errol Flynn, Eric Blair (aka George Orwell), various prostitutes, and annoying socialite Mordaunt Worsleighson, who becomes Hemingway’s unwelcome assistant through much of his determined search for Robles’s killers. Plenty of sex and violence help move the action along, but the underlying reasons for Hemingway’s obsessive quest never become fully clear. (Aug.)