Oh dear. The Grave Gourmet fell as flat as a failed soufflé. I lasted 36 pages. In those first few chapters Capucine, the policewoman who has been dealing with computer fraud and is itching to get out on the streets with the real criminals, flashes her breasts at her superior when she leans over his desk to demand a transfer. And lo and behold, at that very moment a murder is reported and the supervisor sends her off to solve the crime in place of his favorite detective who is out of town. She spends 30 minutes looking for the office of said detective in order to find his team. She wants to cry. The team consists of...wait for it...the tall North African, the butchy woman with the mangled hair cut, and the gay guy with the beautiful hair.
Really? Of all the citizens in Paris, the author picks those three stereotypes?
They head to the scene. Capucine sees the body - her first. She wants to throw up. She meets the forensic guy who calls her 'missy'. That makes her mad. Again, she wants to cry. (By now, so did I.) The first policeman on the scene is Duchamps. The forensic guy is named Dechery. But Duchamps is named as the one to close the large door leading to the refrigerater that just recently held the corpse. A page before Duchamps had left the scene of the crime.
Huh? Can you say lousy editing?
Mistakes like that infuriate me. So does this sentence, blessedly the shortest one I had to read:
She boggled.
Now does the author mean:
1. she hesitated?
2. she was overcome with fright?
or
3. she acted ineptly?
I didn't stick around long enough to find out.
Case closed.
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