Author Hal Graff’s Love and Death at the Encierro is part of a series featuring injured pro baseball player Harold Gatewood, who travels to Spain for the annual encierro, or running of the bulls, and gets embroiled in a Basque terrorist plot.

The novel opens with Basque rebels meeting to plan an attack during the encierro. Unfortunately, it gives little historical or political context about who the Basque are or why they’re fighting the Spanish government, leaving readers wondering why they should care about these resistors. Then, the first scene with Gatewood does the opposite, offering readers far too much detail about the protagonist’s passion for and career in baseball, which he hopes to revive once his injury heals.

The excitement picks up as Gatewood meets a woman he falls in love with (a bit too quickly; Graff seems to have little patience with establishing relationships). While Gatewood and his new lover spend the week watching the bulls running through the streets and in bullfights, a mysterious brute threatens Gatewood and police question him as a suspect in several murders committed during the festival. Unwittingly caught up in political turmoil, Gatewood attempts to solve the murders and prevent the Basque attack.

Graff’s prose is direct and matter-of-fact, offering a nice balance between description and dialogue. However, the novel’s rushed storytelling and lack of emotional character-building makes for a superficial and frustrating read.

The author’s incorrect use of commas is also distracting (one character, he writes, “was six, foot, three, inches in height. He weighed one, hundred, ninety, five pounds of muscle”). And readers might be repelled by Gatewood’s tirade at book’s end, in which he compares his resentment about what he sees as his American culture being erased by immigrants to the Basque fighting the Spanish government.

Ultimately, the novel falters under the weight of its flaws. Readers might appreciate some of its action scenes, but the story requires revision to attract a wide audience.

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