Ready to discover another great book for this 2021? Take a look…

Crocodile Tears by Mercedes Rosende

Genre: Thriller
Source: Random Things Tours
Rating: 4/5
Publisher: Bitter Lemon Press
Amazon, Hive

About The Book

It all starts in an overcrowded prison, where Diego is being held on a charge of kidnapping. Diego’s lawyer, the fastidious Antinucci, secures Diego’s release. But the lawyer has plans for his client, whose unexpected freedom comes at a price: he must join forces with a brutal psychopath, the Hobo, and hold up an armoured truck. A hilarious caper ensues, as the robbery swiftly degenerates into mayhem and violence.
While the men appear to be engaged in a perverse competition to see who is the most incompetent, the disparaged women – Ursula Lopez, an amateur criminal with an insatiable appetite, and her rival, Captain Leonilda Lima – reveal themselves to be the true protagonists. This seemingly classic lowlife crime story has a powerful message: never, ever underestimate the women.

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My Thoughts

This story reminds me of a phrase we use to say a lot in Catalan “Joc dels disbarats”, a nonsense game where there’s an objective to do but no one involved is doing what they are supposed to do to achieve the goal. This doesn’t mean that the story doesn’t have sense or it’s not interesting, but that once you start meeting all the characters involved in the plot you start wondering if they will arrive anywhere…
This is my first read based in Uruguay, so I was quite intrigued with how the author would relate it to the story and how the characters would see the country and place they live. I have to say that I was not disappointed at all, with a sarcastic humor and a lot of surprises during the plot it was impossible to stop passing pages!
I’ll admit that it was a little bit difficult to enter at the beginning, too many characters with their own problems to know who is whom and what part they will have in the story!
Diego is the main character, he is held in prison but will be released soon if he robs an armored truck; of course it will not be as easy as it seems because his helpers will be the most weird characters you could imagine. And then the rest will be history as you can imagine…
If you are looking for a crime book to laugh a little and to make you think too, this is your read, it was a very interesting read, believe me.
Ready for the “Crocodile Tears”?

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About The Author

Mercedes Rosende was born in 1958 in Montevideo, Uruguay. She is a lawyer and a journalist when not writing fiction.
She has won many prizes for her novels and short stories. In 2005 she won the Premio Municipal de Narrativa for ‘Demasiados Blues’, in 2008 the National Literature Prize for ‘La Muerte Tendrá tus Ojos’ and in 2019 the LiBeraturpreis in Germany for ‘Crocodile Tears’.
Tim Gutteridge is a Scottish literary translator based in Cadiz, Andalucia. He works from Spanish and Catalan into English. His translation of ‘Potosí’ (Ander Izagirre) won a PEN Translates Award and was published by Zed Books as ‘The Mountain that Eats Men’.