The Queen Of The South

I should have loved this book. What's not to like? A unlikely rags to riches tale, the main character Tereza Mendoza, (the mexicana, the Queen of the South) is the girlfriend of a drug smuggler, who ends up dead and she on the run. A series of fairly dramatic events leads her to prison where she rather fortuitously meets Patty O'Flaherty. That brings us halfway through this rather long novel written by Arturo Perez Reverte. The second half brings the riches and we see Tereza essentially rise to become the major importer of drugs to southern spain (well the really southern bit of spain near Morocco and Gibraltar) with connections with the russian mafia, columians, italians and with judges and police in her pocket too. She creates quite the impressive business infrastructure that keeps her safe from investigations into her money. From the start of the novel she comes across as more than just a 'narcos' girlfriend and by the end she is proven to be intelligent and shrewd and risen to the top of a industry which would i'm guessing would be fairly unheard of for a woman especially. It's got gun fights, police chases, a pretty sizeable TWIST near the end and I liked Tereza so what was wrong? Honestly it's pretty bland the story isn't particularly gripping, it's all a little bit predictable and not that believable. All in all I couldn't recommend it. 2 stars.