Ritos de muerte

Petra Delicado is a former lawyer turned police inspector, newly assigned to Barcelona's Documentation Department, where she is paired with Fermín Garzón — an experienced 57-year-old widower recently transferred from Salamanca. The mismatched pair are handed a rape case with almost nothing to go on beyond an unusual mark the attacker leaves on his victims' arms: a small crown of spikes that scars the skin into the shape of a flower.

As the investigation widens to reveal further victims, Petra and Garzón's inexperience with each other costs them, even as they close in on the truth. Giménez Bartlett uses the case to probe social determinism and class difference in contemporary Barcelona, setting the tone the series would keep across its later volumes.

Published in 1996, Ritos de muerte is the first book in the Petra Delicado series, one of the best-selling Spanish crime series of the past three decades.