With her husband giving an academic lecture in a nearby city, Carolyn decides to travel to Barcelona to sample the cuisine and visit her friend, Roberta Hecht, who is the resident Miro scholar at a museum. However, no sooner does Carolyn arrive at the museum than she discovers a dead body in the performance art exhibit. Worse still, the dead woman is the spitting image of her friend Robbie.

Unfortunately when the police arrive on the scene, Robbie is soon seen as the prime suspect. Being as she has experience in this sort of thing, and for the fact that she discovered the body, Carolyn is convinced that she’ll have to do some snooping in order to clear her friend’s name. It’s this snooping that soon reveals a host of other suspects, making the players at the museum contenders for a cast of a prime-time American soap opera.

The Perils of Paella has a rather interesting writing format, and one interesting character. The story is told between two shifting points of view – that of Carolyn’s and Inspector Ildefons Pujol i Serra’s. The author labels the beginning of each chapter, revealing to the reader whose point of view they are reading. It was different and rather clever. Also, getting a peak inside the working of the Spanish police system and watching Inspector Pujol in action were enjoyable to read about.

Unfortunately ever other character in this book made me want to ram my head into a wall. The worst offender is Carolyn’s friend Robbie. She is so annoying I couldn’t help wishing they would toss her in jail just for kicks. She’s one of these middle-aged women who act and dress like a buxom 20-year-old, flirting with any male that has a pulse. It also doesn’t help matters that towards the end of the book all she wants to do is boink her 5th and latest husband. Which, incidentally, is after an episode where Carolyn, the best friend trying to clear her name, is threatened and very nearly escapes harm.

Carolyn fares slightly better until she becomes involved in the investigation. Every time she meets with the Inspector to discuss what information she’s uncovered, she comes off like a babbling ninny. I wanted to tell her to shut up already. Even worse is the fact that she fails to tell the Inspector the entire truth, and even withholds evidence from the crime scene. By this stage in the game there is really no valid reason for this subterfuge, and I was mightily disappointed when a perturbed Spanish judge didn’t throw the lot of pushy Americans in jail.

The author does do a nice job of showing the clash between Catalan, Spanish and American cultures. However, after hearing for the umpteenth time that all Americans are workaholic drug addicts that lack morals, this aspect of the plot started to wear a little thin. The mystery itself fairs slightly better until the ending, when the whodunit is revealed in a terribly anticlimactic, and frankly, unbelievable way.

Dispersed throughout the story are recipes for such notable Spanish cuisine as tapas, gazpacho, paella and panellets. Unfortunately these recipes are surrounding by characters that, outside of Inspector Pujol, I wanted to read about getting run over by a Barcelona bus. Fans of the series may find something of interest here, but this newcomer was glad to leave Carolyn, Robbie, and their band of merry men behind.

--Wendy Crutcher