GAUDI AFTERNOON

A quirky, often funny, wild-goose chase of a missing person's case. Here, freelance translator Cassandra Reilly romps through Barcelona, trying first to find the beautiful Frankie's husband--who turns out to be a ""she"" (Frankie turns out to be a ""he"")--and then their daughter Delilah, whom Frankie and hubby take turns kidnapping. On occasion Delilah is also abducted by a gay guitarist, a lesbian with her biological clock ticking, and Frankie's current lover (a Sultry, earth-mother reflexologist who used to be a man). While scampering from one baroque Gaudi-designed landmark to another in pursuit of Delilah and her assorted kidnappers, Cassandra proceeds with translating a tumultuous, in-search-of-mother saga by ""the fourteenth writer to be compared to Garcia Márquez."" Moreover, thanks to a self-inflicted haircut and a fondness for a short-skirted, high-heeled hairdresser, Cassandra herself is often mistaken for a he--bringing the author's amusing gender-bending full circle just in time for a happy, if somewhat unconventional, ending. An amusing caper from the author of the Para Nilsen series (The Dog Collar Murders, etc.). Feminism as redefined by Marx (Groucho).