[Delicado & Garzon 01] • Rites De Mort

*From the winner of the Feminino Lumen Prize for best female writer in Spain, a new book in the Petra Delicado mystery series*.

Inspector Petra Delicado has been chained to a tiresome desk job in the documentation department of the Barcelona police force for months. But things are about to change. The department is short-handed and there's a serial rapist on the loose. Delicado is partnered with the portly and impossibly compliant Sergeant Fermin Garzon with orders to solve the case before it succeeds in ruining the good name of the Barcelona police force. However, the only lead they have is the rapist's mysterious signature; a circular mark of unknown origins he leaves on his victims' forearms. No witnesses, no other leads, and no help from the victims themselves. To further complicate her life, Inspector Delicado is trying to shake off two ex-husbands, Hugo, who persists in shamelessly belittling her, and Pepe, as helpless and hapless as a little boy in her absence. (*from the cover blurb*)

Tough, sexy, at times apparently pitiless, Petra Delicado is a new kind of cop in Spanish crime writing. As she does battle with sexist colleagues, ruthless reporters, indifferent witnesses, hardened criminals, ex-husbands, and houseplants that just won't flower, she sometimes thinks her thirst for new challenges and perpetual change is more trouble than its worth.