Death on a Galician Shore in Around the World in 80 Books

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May 05, 2022 Julie Griffin rated it it was amazing

I enjoy the slow-paced police procedurals that have me walking along in the footsteps of detectives who become like friends as we engage in everyday life as well as progress through solving a crime. I enjoy Elizabeth George's Havers and Val McDermid's detective's as they sidestep match-making attempts and renovate barns and develop relationships with dogs. Death on a Galician Shore was my introduction to Inspector Leo Caldas, a man with a broken relationship, an irksome junior, a love for Captai I enjoy the slow-paced police procedurals that have me walking along in the footsteps of detectives who become like friends as we engage in everyday life as well as progress through solving a crime. I enjoy Elizabeth George's Havers and Val McDermid's detective's as they sidestep match-making attempts and renovate barns and develop relationships with dogs. Death on a Galician Shore was my introduction to Inspector Leo Caldas, a man with a broken relationship, an irksome junior, a love for Captain's Courageous and wine and steamed barnacles, who spends a lot of time in the wrong shoes as he travels up and down the coast of northwestern Spain from Vigo, after a man's body washes ashore near his small fishing village.
We become steeped in the culture, superstitions, and travails of fishing for a living as Caldas determines that the man died not from suicide, as first suspected, but was murdered. A life-long bachelor and fisher, the man left a quiet life of work and visiting his widowed mother and sister every day, until he became inexplicably anxious. There are several suspects and Caldas soon focuses on a shipwreck years ago which involved the murder victim as well as two other survivors, and a captain who died. What are the dangers that ebbed forward like the tides to finally crash around the survivors? What secrets have they been keeping? I very much enjoyed the inspector becoming sure, along with the reader, that he'd solved the crime, and then the currents pull us back an into another direction.
In between trips to the village we accompany Leo to some pretty mouth-watering coastal Spanish meals, to an amusing radio show where he serves reluctantly as the Patrolman of the Waves, a police call-in show, and to his father's vineyard. Caldas is a literate, thoughtful man and a good main character.
Highly recommend this second in a two-book series, especially for fans of culturally steeped procedurals such as Donna Leon's Brunnetti series. Villar grew up on the Galician Shore and his love for the place and the laid back nature of the people shine through. This book won the 2009 Brigade 21 Prize for Best Crime Novel in Spain. I'm looking forward to reading the first Caldas novel, Water-Blue Eyes, as well. ...more

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Jan 13, 2023 Andy Plonka rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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Set in Spain on the Galician Coast, an old case of a fisherman after missing after a storm with an unexpected ending. Very well written.

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Around the World in 80 Books