CUESTIÓN DE TATUAJES
TATTOO MATTERS

THE INFLUENCE OF THE COPLA IN PEPE CARVALO’S FIRST CASE

Summary/Abstract: Although the figure of Pepe Carvalho, not as a private investigator, but as a CIA operative, appears for the first time in Yo maté a Kennedy (1972), it is not until 1974 that Manuel Vázquez Montalbán places him in charge of his first case, which is narrated in the novel Tatuaje. The above-mentioned novel shares its name with a popular postwar Spanish copla performed by Conchita Piquer, a music theme that, apart from being one of the leitmotifs of the writer’s literary and essayistic production plays an essential role within Montalban’s whodunit debut feature. The main purpose of this study is to locate Conchita Piquer’s theme, Tatuaje, in the homonymous novel, and to establish its role and significance in solving the crime represented in the text. Furthermore, this analysis is complemented by a comparison between Tatuaje and Three Blind Mice and Other Stories (1950) by Agatha Christie – in order to determine a potential original source of the use of the song in the construction of the thriller – and also with another novel of the Barcelonian, La Rosa de Alejandría (1984), also belonging to the Carvalho series, and whose title, like Tatuaje, refers to a folk song.

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