The Awkward Squadby Sam Gordon, Sophie Hénaff
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 1681440032
Series: Awkward Squad #1
Publication Date: April 3, 2018
Pages: 272
Genre: Mystery
Publisher: MacLehose Press
I can’t remember where I heard about this book (best bet is here on BL) but it was described as a new mystery series similar to the old tv show Leverage*. The premise of the show was a group of misfits coming together to right the wrongs big business perpetrated against the people. The Awkward Squad’s misfits are police officers unfit for regular duty but can’t be fired, banded together and stuffed away in a remote location with the ostensible task of investigating cold cases. I loved Leverage, so bought this directly after it came out.
It’s not quite Leverage – the misfits here aren’t conmen, toughs or savants; these misfits are all broken by their jobs in one way or another, but it’s close enough. For a first novel, I thought the story was excellent and well plotted too, although with definite room for improvement. It was written well enough that I only had vague suspicions about the solution, but not done so well that the author was able to lead me down the blind alley she’d constructed. The characters were the kind you cheer on, even if some of them aren’t always likeable.
I didn’t know when I bought the book that it was originally published in France a few years ago, under the name Poulets grillés. This leaves me with a lingering suspicion that it might have been an even better book in the original French. Not that the translation is bad – as far as I can tell it’s flawless – but some of the marketing I’ve seen raves about the book humor. I can see how it’s meant to be amusing, and one scene was definitely shooting for hilarity, but either something was lost in translation or it’s a cultural difference of what defines funny.
Either way, I didn’t like it less because I suspect I’m missing something, I just wonder if, had those 2.5 years of French lessons stuck at all, and I were able to read it in the original, I’d have liked it even more. Ce n’est pas grave, if Hēnaff writes another one, I’ll happily be on board for reading it (in translation).
* – Has also been compared to Jussi Adler-Olsen’s tales about Copenhagen’s equally marginal Department Q. I cannot comment on how accurate this is, as I’ve not read Adler-Olsen. Yet?