Washed-up Brits, local lowlifes and a Kray twin’s lighter: noir novel Spanish Beauty shines fond light on Benidorm

Benidorm is the setting for Esther García Llovet’s new novel Spanish Beauty. Photograph: Esther Garcia Llovet

Despite spending the summers of her youth in Fuengirola, watching the foreign tourists at play and devouring the English-language paperbacks she found in a little bookshop in the Andalucían town, nothing could prepare Esther García Llovet for the spectacular unreality of the place that inspired her noir novel Spanish Beauty.

“Benidorm is something of a myth in Spain – and a myth that no one goes to because there’s this stigma that Benidorm is the worst place in Spain,” says the writer.