El Laberinto de las Aceitunas by Eduardo Mendoza

Given that I am offcially on vacation this week, I've decided to pay a quick visit to a relatively unknown territory (well, at least for me) of literatura ligera.

Eduardo Mendoza is definitely a borderline kind of author on the subject, with some of his novels competing to run for la selección española de las obras maestras contemporáneas, including his most recent Riña de Gatos: Madrid 1936.

On the adventurist side, apart from his excellent Sin Noticias de Gurb alien comedy, his most prominent light series is a collection of several novels about an unnamed detective loco. While for the year or so I was contemplating whether to read installment #2, first published in 1982, about the olives labyrinth (not present in the novel, by the way – as compared to the actual crypta in installment #1), Mendoza came up with his fourth one last year.

I guess the most common feature of the two novels in the series I've had so far – while they are absolute fun to read, it seems Mendoza never knows how to finish them properly, and in the last 20% of the book (as kindle kindly and precisely indicates) things take the most strange turns and typically end nowhere. But I guess that matters un pimiento – in Mendoza's easy fiction, the process of reading (ie partcipating) is much more than the result itself. Truly Olympic spirit, huh. Shall I start the third one now, about el tocador de señoras? Hm.