in which my dad rules

[waider]

(the following was conducted by text message)
Me: Reading perez-reverte book. Suddenly struck by the question 'do illicit drugs have a sell-by date?'
Dad: Ask john gilligan in portlaoise prison

Comments

[waider.livejournal.com]

I am thus far enjoying it. Occasional exclamations and thoughts have been left in Spanish, but I don't need help with cabrone and the like. I gotta say, though, I've read pretty much anything by Pereze-Reverte I can lay my hands on, and I've yet to find anything to beat The Dumas Club. Which I've a vague notion you may have told me about in the first place.

[zadcat.livejournal.com]

It was Kludge who recommended The Dumas Club to me. I really liked it, and also The Seville Communion, which is very funny (and I think would make a good movie), but one or two others of his seemed a little more lightweight.

[waider.livejournal.com]

A funny thing: the novel is written as if it is the story of a guy writing a novel about the Queen of the South, right up to an authentic-seeming acknowledgements page which honestly had me fooled into thinking the book wasn't entirely fiction until I noticed that the author implies he's from Culiacán, which Perez-Reverte is not. But it's still not entirely clear.

However, that's not the funny thing.

The book mentions the narcocorridos, contemporary folk songs sung about drug dealers with references to low-flying planes landing on hidden airfields and what not. And while googling around for anything that might hint at the book having some non-fiction hooks, I found this: a song by a band mentioned in the book about Teresa Mendoza, the Queen of the South.