The Perils of Paella

Carolyn Blue comes to Barcelona to meet up with her friend Roberta and enjoy the tastes of Spanish cuisine. She also finds a the discovery of a dead body in a performance art piece also on her menu. The fact that it bears a striking resemblance to her friend is just more spice on the dish.

The style of the book is a narrative between Carolyn and the Inspector Pujol, the policeman in charge of the investigation. Told in chapters titled by the character who is narrating at that point. Carolyn telling of the dive/dangerous areas of the town she winds up in and what is happening from her side. Inspector Pujol tells of what he has to deal with in the upper echelons of the politicos he has to deal with, along with dealing with the American show more lady and her talkativeness. Carolyn moves at a quicker pace than Pujol but both with the same goal...solve the murder.

One glitch is dealing with the names. An example is Inspector Pujol's name is formally Inspector Ildefons Pujol i Serra. It seems that i Serra denotes 'of Serra'. A number of characters are so names in the text. Also being in California I am used to a different type of Spanish that what is found in Spain. I know there is a difference. Once I settled into this all was fine.

I have read Nancy Fairbanks' books before and do enjoy them. They are light read with enough clues and red herrings to keep you guessing along the way. Also the characters aren't weighted down with too much personal baggage. What I call a fun quick read or ... a Goodread. show less

I enjoyed this mystery once I was able to get into it. I received this book as a gift and I've given it a 4* rating. This story would have benefited a character list at the beginning. Once I could get the characters straight, it moved along better but parts of it still moved a little slow. There was a lot of action and strange things happening. Things started to straighten out towards the end and more questions were answered toward the end. A lot of interesting things were talked about in Barcelona, Spain in 2003.