Customer Reviews

Death Rites

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(3.5 stars) Though this is the third novel which Europa Editions has released in the Petra Delicado series, set in Spain (following Dog Day and Prime Time Suspect), it is the first in the series, chronologically. Introducing us to Inspector Petra Delicado and her sergeant, Fermin Garzon, a detective combo which somehow meshes perfectly, the novel explores their contrary life-styles, individual quirks, and differing ages and backgrounds. Now in her thirties, Petra has abandoned her upscale law career--and her arrogant husband and law partner Hugo--to become a police officer in Barcelona. Her second marriage to Pepe, a charming, younger man who is still dependent upon her, has also ended in divorce.

Fermin, a widower living alone, is estranged from his son, a doctor who lives in New York, but he is softer and more sentimental than Petra--a laid-back and ferociously hard-working retiree from the Salamanca force, anxious to do his job in Barcelona. Always aware that she is the inspector and he is the sergeant, he keeps his mouth closed when she becomes aggressive but stays around to pick up the pieces when that becomes necessary. Paunchy and in his fifties, Fermin lives in a dreary boarding house but spends his after-hours eating, drinking, and talking at The Ephemerides, a bar owned by Pepe, Petra's ex-husband.

Petra and Fermin are called in to investigate the cases of three young women who have been raped. All have been branded on their forearms with a flower-shaped mark made by barbs. None of the victims can or will provide any information, and Petra and Fermin must rely on tedious searches through databanks and plenty of legwork to come up with suspects. What was the instrument used to brand the victims? Who might have made it? Who might have ordered it? And ultimately, who would have murdered one of the victims, weeks after the crime? Along the way, they must deal with the police hierarchy, which wants results, and with aggressive reporters who believe, and publicly state, that Petra and Fermin are unqualified for the job.

Spanish author Alicia Gimenez-Bartlett is at least as interested in character here as in dramatic action. Concentrating on the intellectual contests between the rapist and the victims and eventually between a killer and victim, the author also shows Petra and Fermin to be engaged in separate intellectual contests with the perpetrators, with each other, with the police department, and with the press. Little action takes place on stage, and the rapes and the murders are "reported" rather than presented "live." Those who have read Prime Time Suspect, the third novel in this series, may find this mystery simple and unsophisticated by comparison. Here the stories of the investigators, the victims, and the perpetrators, and how they became the people they are, take center stage. n Mary Whipple

. . . [there are] many a rite which Earth and Heaven abhors." Percy Bysshe Shelley

"Death Rites" is the first in a series of books by Alicia Gimenez-Bartlett featuring Barcelona Police Inspector Petra Delicado. A young woman in Barcelona is raped and, in a strange rite, the rapist seared a flower-shaped brand on to the victim's arm. Inspector Petra Delicado, recently transferred from a desk job is assigned to be the lead investigator. She is paired with an older detective, Fermin Garzon, and they set of to investigate. Before long two more rapes accompanied by the ritualized branding take place and Delicado and Garzon must deal with internal politics while trying to sort out the clues and solve the crimes.

In many ways "Death Rites" has a very familiar structure and plot: a new Inspector is given a partner and they must learn to set aside the stereotypes and bad first impression each has of the other as they proceed to investigate; a series of crimes are committed that results in political pressure coming down on the investigators; and the collection of evidence and clues that leads invariably (one hopes) to the identification and capture of the culprit(s). It takes a good writer to make such a seemingly generic story arc worth reading and Alicia Gimenez Bartlett has done just that.

Of course, the character of the protagonist plays a critical role here and Inspector Petra Delicado turns out to be a pretty interesting character. Police work is a second career for Petra. She left a successful career as an attorney when her marriage to another attorney (and colleague) broke up. After getting through the police academy and qualifying as a detective Petra is shunted off to a desk job that is `safe' for a woman in the male-dominated Barcelona police force. She chafes at this and fights to get real police work. She is beset with a number of insecurities, perhaps party due to the impact of her divorce and perhaps party due to her struggle with learning how to deal with being a woman in a `man's world'. Her struggles were irritating to me at first because I thought her insecurities overshadowed her abilities to the point of distraction. However, it soon became apparent to me that it was her struggles and her doubts that made her a compelling and endearing character. As written by Gimenez-Bartlett, Delicado's struggle to succeed is marked not only by the resistance of the entrenched attitudes of her colleague but also by her own need to find the right `voice' and manner that will help her get her job done. This struggle is particularly evident in how her relationship to Sgt. Garzon plays out. Garzon is older and more experienced but Delicado is still his boss. Garzon has less of a need to play tough than Delicado in part because he is a male and does not need to prove he belongs in a male world but also because he is older and content to play out his career as a Sgt.

As the plot thickens, the relationship between Delicado and Garzon is fleshed out. There are missteps along the way but you can see the progress being made on both fronts. By the time the book reaches its climax we do see something of a resolution as far as the crimes are concerned. As to the relationship between Delicado and Garzon, and as to Delicado's comfort level as a detective, there is obviously room for growth. These stories have been very popular in Spain and after reading this first volume (although the third released here in English) it is pretty easy to understand why. Petra Delicado grew on me while I read the book and I did not regret taking a chance on an author and a book that was not known to me when I picked it up.

All in all, Death Rites was well worth reading. Recommended. L. Fleisig

Petra Delicado is anything but delicate, an in-your-face forty-something feminist who used to be a lawyer. Restless and unpredictable, she abandons her prestigious career and ends up the paperwork maven in the Documentation Department of the Barcelona police force. She's been divorced twice, and must be pretty hot because her ex-husbands can't leave her alone.

One day, probably because every other cop on the premises is busy, she's given a rape case. Her partner is Fermin Garzón, an aging sergeant who's everything Petra is not - steady, conventional and great at following orders. With Petra as his superior, however, following orders takes all the inner strength he can muster.

There's only one clue: the rapist signs every victim with a circular mark that he somehow pierces into her forearm.

Petra and her sidekick have amazing obstacles to deal with - aggressive journalists, apathetic victims, outraged parents - and their own mood swings.

Death Rites is a rather foreboding title, yet the book is immensely entertaining. Petra makes an irreverent narrator who keeps the reader alternately outraged and sympathetic from crisis to crisis.

I was so happy to discover this totally quirky Spanish writer!

Oh, boy, where to begin? This is probably the worst crime fiction I have ever read. I forced myself to finish it thinking that perhaps it would develop beyond its initial stilted flatness. But no, I was wrong. Endless long-winded stream-of-consciousness thoughts of the protagonist arguing with herself. Boring nonsense with little character development; boring settings, flat plot, with only an occasional spark that, alas, leads nowhere. This is the first Spanish author I've read, and may well be the last. Perhaps it might be a better read in Catalan, and if so, then this author needs to find a new translator. I'm trying an Italian author next. If you're an American looking for interesting foreign crime novels, try the Scandinavians: Stieg Larsson (if you haven't already) and Jo Nesbo.

Amazon insists you choose a star rating. Even though I had to check one, I give this novel ZERO stars.

This is the first book I've read by this author, and I probably will not read any other books in the Inspector Delicado series. The plot would have fared much better in the hands of someone like Perez-Reverte or Ruiz Zafon, and they certainly would have conveyed a greater sense of place. There is such a total absence of description of the physical location that the story could have been set in any metropolitan area or in none. Anyone expecting at least a whiff of the many sensations Barcelona offers will be sorely disappointed. The two principal characters, detectives Petra Delicado and Fermin Garzon, are so awash in neuroses and personality tics that I never developed any empathy for either of them. They spend much of their time either fearing that their superiors will remove them from the case at hand or, alternatively, wishing that they would be removed; and half-way through the book I was wishing for their replacement as well. There are several superb translators of Spanish to English (Edith Grossman, Natashia Wimmer, Margaret Jull Costa, etc.) who deliver a true sense of the Spanish or South American characters and locations at the heart of the story they are retelling in English. Their translations always seem spot on and they do not inject into the translation their own origins and ethnic backgrounds. Sadly, one cannot say the same of Jonathan Dunne's translation of Death Rites. His translation is so replete with Aussie and British expressions and phrasing that the reader can lapse into thinking the story is set in Devon or New South Wales (especially since the author has failed in her own right to anchor the reader in Barcelona). One glaring example of Mr. Dunne's Anglo chauvinism is his repeated use of the mild expletive "crikey!" Is there any Spanish expletive that can or should be translated as "crikey"? When a translator insinuates his own ethnicity in such a fashion he demonstrates a careless lack of appreciation for the work, the author and the reader.

"Death Rites" is a pretty fair police procedural set in Barcelona in the 1990s. One of the odder couples in international crime stories--Inspector Petra Delicado and Sgt. Fermin Garzon--is the collective protagonist here, attempting to track down a serial rapist who is attacking diminutive young women and branding them as a part of the assault. The tracking of the rapist is a long, slow process here, described at length in sometimes excruciating detail.

More of the story is focused on the principal characters and their struggles to sort out their lives. Inspector Delicado is a well-educated ex-lawyer, who isn't comfortable conforming to traditional standards for lawyers, cops, women, the middle class or marriage. "Death Rites" author gives over much of this novel to Delicado's internal conversations about the meaning of life and the problems of marriage. In this story, the Inspector has had two of the latter, followed by two divorces.

Delicado's partner, Fermin Garzon, is a grizzled, 57-year old widower who has always played by the rules, but comes to admire and increasingly emulate his partner's continuing non-conformance and rebelliousness. The yin and yang differences in these two characters are the book's great strength.

What I think this book could have used was: a better title ("Death Rites" is next to meaningless in the story's context.); more energy (the plot creeps forward and ends with a kind of deflating plop); and a bit of fluffing up of the main character, Delicado (who is too often portrayed as a neurotic, self-doubting b***h). More Barcelona atmospherics wouldn't have gone amiss.

Admittedly, this is the first book in the Delicado/Garzon series and author Gimenez-Bartlett may have taken it a stronger direction or even gotten a better translator for the sequels. I'm willing to try the next one on the strength of what was in "Death Rites."