Dog Day (Original title: Día de perros) by Alicia Giménez Bartlett

Original title: Día de perros (1997)

Alicia Giménez Bartlett

Editorial Planeta S.A. Colección Booket.

Tercera impresión: septiembre 2009

336 páginas

ISBN: 978-84-08-06567-8

Dog Day is the second instalment in the Petra Delicado series by Alicia Giménez Bartlett, but it was the first available in English. Here we find again Inspector Petra Delicado and Sergeant Fermín Garzón back to a desk job, despite their previous success as investigators. Unexpectedly they are assigned to a modest case, probably because there was no other male inspector available. A man, who was beaten up, lays in coma at Valle Hebrón Hospital. He is a completely unknown as he carries no documentation. He was found at three in the morning and there are no witnesses of the assault.

With no clues our team will discover first a world of dog trainers, dog breeders and missing dogs’ recovery companies that will end up in an underworld of dog trafficking and dog fighting. And then both their case and their personal lives will get more complicated. The unknown man died, Petra falls in love with a veterinarian and Fermín finds himself in a love triangle with two women.

As it is mainly the case in Giménez Bartlett’s novels, the plot is not that important but this doesn’t take away my interest from her books. The characters are fantastic and pretty well drawn. The dialogs are superb and it is very well written. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is really worthwhile to read them in order to fully understand the evolution of Petra Delicado and Fermín Garzón relationship. See also International Noir Fiction for an excellent review of this book.

The complete series is made up of eight books so far. Three are available in English.

1. Ritos de muerte, 1996 (Death Rites, 2008)

2. Día de perros, 1997 (Dog Day, 2006)

3. Mensajeros de la oscuridad, 1999

4. Muertos de papel, 2000 (Prime Time Suspect, 2007)

5. Serpientes en el paraíso, 2002

6. Un barco cargado de arroz, 2004

7. Nido vacío, 2007

8. El silencio de los claustros, 2009