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Things that make you go "Hmmm."
Today I finished a prose novel, Dog Day by Alicia Gimenez-Bartlet, translated from Spanish by Nicholas Caistor.
I can tell the book was written by a European. I can't pin it down to specific examples--aside from the obvious cracks about uber-violent gun-toting crazy cowboy Americans--but the feel and pacing of the novel make it obvious to me.
Anyway, I thought it was worth blogging about because I solved the Big Mystery and spotted one of the perpetrators by page 55. The publisher really should have chosen a different dog breed to grace the cover of the book, or better yet gone with a bunch of different dogs altogether. A pit bull, really? How obvious can you get? Or maybe as an uber-violent gun-toting crazy cowboy American, the knowledge that arranged dog fights happen isn't a foreign concept to me. Clearly Europeans didn't see that one coming a mile--oh, excuse me, 1.61 KILOMETERS--away, as this book is the start of a successful mystery series.
Now I sound all bitchy. HAHA, "bitchy" in regards to a book featuring dogs. LOL LOL LOL. The uber-violent gun-toting crazy cowboy American sentiment only came up two times. I guess it just irritates me.
And while the book's big mystery wasn't much of one for me, I did like the two lead characters. The female lead, Inspector Petra Delicado, is a twice-divorced childfree woman in her 40s who is not looking for romance. She wants to do her job and maybe have some casual fun with men on the side. The male lead is her policeman partner, Officer Garzon, who is in his 50s, a widower, has a bushy mustache, loves to eat, has a belly to reflect that, and figures out in this book he is allowed to date women again. Not Petra, though. They have no attraction to each other and are strictly work colleagues and sort-of friends.
It's nice to read a book that doesn't feature beautiful, honest, find-true-love-and-live-happily-ever-after types. Particularly in the female lead. I do like Petra. She's mature, knows mostly what she wants, is good at her job, and is willing to venture out in the middle of the night wearing only a raincoat over her fave frumpy old nightgown to comfort her friend Garzon in his agony. That's a stand-up woman, in my book.
I'd read more of the series, if they're ever translated. Hopefully their mysteries won't be so blatant for me, eh? ^^