Armando Zozaya and Miguel Prado, the detectives in “The Puzzle of the Broken Watch” by María Elvira Bermúdez are parodies of Holmes and Watson. Miguel Prado, like Watson, does not pay attention to small details. For example, it did not “occur to [Miguel] to ask about [where the girl, Juan, bought for herself]” (4), but Armando did. Armando is like the Sherlock Holmes of this story, it seems like when everything seems to be already discovered- Armando asks the more important questions to gather even the most miniscule of details. For example, when he asks himself “why… the sisters and her little girl, [Rosita], gone so long on their errand”, it illustrates that even the most outlandish claims do not escape his eye. However, unlike Holmes, Armando is very compassionate towards others – as exhibited by his treatment of Rosita. Furthermore, Armando is like the main protagonist in any generic story, he has the “intuition” to think of the exact thing that could have possibly happened to figure out the story. On the other hand, it seems like Watson acts like a dimwit to Holmes – just so the reader can understand the thought process of Armando when he arrives at his conclusions. This is further backed by the fact that Miguel does not contribute anything significant enough to the plot and story. Thus, I personally think that this is a lazy way to explain plot and characters intentions in a story. Moreover, I believe that this would be a much greater story if Miguel had been killed at the beginning and Armando had to find his cause of death plus finish his case. This way the reader can interpret what happened in the story for themselves without a detective hand-holding them all the way through. Give the audience a beginning, an end, and enough meat/details in the middle; and it would have been a much greater story.
I found your point of view very interesting, yes, we saw that the story is very generic as you already mentioned. I totally agree that the story would be richer in information and interest when the reader is given the opportunity to look for the clues on his own.
Maybe we can infer that the author’s intention wasn´t only to show the “reality” of the corruption that was (and still is) happening in the country.
Perhaps we can think that the author used this type of “easy” story because she wanted to illustrate a point, and perhaps she wanted it to be quick and easy for her audience to understand.
It is also very important to mention that she was the first woman to write a “Detective Fiction” (in Mexico) and maybe she wanted to do it her way but maybe with some practice time the story could have been more interesting.