conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide a description for a book titled The Spanish Game about Albemarle, Northeast, North with the genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Mystery.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: the author was born in his own mind and has numerous writing credits for short fiction under another name and in a different genre. He lives with his wife, two dogs and five cats, and writes in relative obscurity in the Albemarle area of Northeast North Carolina. See www.douglasquinn.com
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: com. He lives with his wife, two dogs and five cats, and writes in relative obscurity in the Albemarle area of Northeast North Carolina. See www.douglasquinn.the author was born in his own mind and has numerous writing credits for short fiction under another name and in a different genre.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the first three paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Spanish Game
  The café is squared off at the southern end of a vast barnlike structure more akin to a garden center than the terminus of a mainline railway station. A jungle of tropical plants, sprayed at heights of ten or fifteen meters by the frequent mists of an automatic watering system, completely dominates the center of the conservatory. It is one of the strangest sights in all Madrid. I take a corner seat beside a wooden railing and order freshly squeezed orange juice from a young waiter who seems nervous and out of control. Maybe it's his first day.
  Bonilla's assistant is a respectable-looking woman in early middle age wearing a neat navy blue suit and plenty of mascara. She might be a single mother with a sideline in encyclopedia sales; it's hard to imagine her tracing a missing person or snooping around in an extramarital affair.
  The conversation takes place in Spanish and I lie right from the start. I'm not going to mention Arenaza. I'm not going to tell them about Zulaika or the cops. This is just a matter of finding out a little about Rosalía's life: why she left Plettix, how she met Gael.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide four more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I feel again with my right hand, slowly tapping along the panel above my head. There is an odd, recognizable smell, a mixture of alcohol and pine, that same acid sting in my throat. My fingers curl around what feels like the handle of a door. Lifting my head, risking the pain, I pull it and a bright light immediately flares into the space. When I open my eyes against it I see that I have been lying on the backseat of a car parked inside a tiny cinder-block garage. I am inside the Audi. What am I doing here?
  The agony of asking my twisted body to move is worse perhaps than any pain that I can recall from the interrogation. Every part of me aches: feet, calves, thighs, arms, shoulders, neck, blending into a single conscious suffering. I am wretched with thirst. I have to sit with the door open and my feet on the ground for as much as thirty seconds while I gather the strength to stand. There is terrible bruising around my stomach, a scarlet map that appalls me when I lift my shirt to look at it. These are my clothes, the ones I wore to Valdelcubo; I am no longer wearing their rags. I try to put weight on my legs, but the pain makes it difficult to walk. After just two steps I open the passenger door and collapse into the seat.
  What is this place? A waiting room for death? My captors have clearly left, yet I have no idea where I am, of the time or date, of their reasons for doing so, or of my right to survive. I check my unshaved face in the rearview mirror for signs of bruising and cuts, but it appears to be mercifully unmarked. They would not have wanted the public to see my beaten face if I went in front of the press. That would be bad for ETA's support base. They were thinking all the time about the presentation.
  Standing again, supporting myself on the open door, I walk very slowly, like an old and crippled man, toward the front of the garage. The air is stuffy and damp. I am aware of my own smell, of my sour breath and sweat. The door is not locked. When I turn the handle it slides up easily over my head, revealing a barren landscape of dust and low, pale hills. This is not the farmhouse. It is a different place. We have left the Basque country and come south into the desert. It looks like Aragón.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the last four paragraphs.. End with the sentence ' Martin's Press.'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Very cool, very reserved, the diplomat conducts a rapid up-and-down analysis of my appearance. Shoes to face. Lunatic or messiah?
  With that simple question I know that he is taking me seriously. I reach into my jacket pocket and take out the Paris-issued Lithuanian passport. It's not ideal, but it will do. The diplomat pulls it through the bars as the guard scuffs his feet.
  I feel a great surge of affection, of victory. The diplomat turns to the guard and instructs him to buzz the metal door on the right of the fence. I walk toward it and step onto British soil for the first time in seven years.
  Samuel Loewenberg, Rupert Harris, Smriti Belbase, Sid Lowe, Henry Wilks, Boris Starling, and Natalia Velasco read early drafts of the novel and offered invaluable comments and observations. My baby son, Stanley, ate several pages of the manuscript. Then the usual suspects took over: Tif Loehnis at Janklow and Nesbit; Rowland White at Michael Joseph. My thanks also to Luke Janklow, Claire Dippel, Rebecca Folland, Kirsty Gordon, and to Frances Sayers, Diane Reverand, Kathleen Conn, and Keith Kahla at St. Martin's Press.