A Body in Barcelona

A Body in Barcelona is the 5th Max Camara Novel but the first one that I have read. It is a police detective novel set in Valencia, Spain but is categorized as a political thriller by the publisher.

The murder of a prominent businessman's young son did not occur until 70 pages into the book.  Setting descriptions abounded before the crime occurred. This overwhelmed me because they were about the police divisions in Spain and the Spanish language was used to describe the names of all of the divisions. Throughout the book I kept forgetting who was who. Place names, street names, district names were also all in Spanish. Spanish words were thrown in the book here and there. I don't speak Spanish so it was difficult for me to follow the plot. I tried to find a map to determine where each locale was at but couldn't find the right map. Location seemed important when cities are culturally divided in half, i.e., one part Spanish and one part Morrocan.

There was much writing about the current state of political affairs in Spain and in the EU. Since I am totally unfamiliar with their politics I kept wondering what part of it was true, if any. I didn't know what to believe. In essence, my lack of knowledge about Spain and various EU political departments made it hard to follow the story. The author presumes the reader can follow along. The mystery part of the book did begin moving around page 125 but the above problems handicapped my ability to understand the book. Each time the story started moving for me the author threw in a Spanish word and I could not understand the sentence. It was frustrating.

The author grew up in the UK and lived in Spain for several years so I believe that this book was written for Europeans. Also, I have to wonder if it would have been an easier read if I had begun reading the series with the first book.  I became so frustrated with the book I skipped about 100 pages to get to the end just to find out why the boy was killed. I still don't know due to the Spanish words that were occasionally used.

I don't quite know how to rate the book. It might be a great book for someone who speaks Spanish and is familiar with Spain. For me, it was a 0. Yes, 0 out of 5 stars. My first 0 rated book.