Summary | Excerpt | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Jan 2005, 243 pages
Paperback:
Jan 2006, 272 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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From the book jacket: Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro. Three policemen have been killed over
the course of a few days.
Immediately the police world is thrown into turmoil. Who would risk running
around the city killing cops, even unpopular ones? Espinosa, chief of the 12th Precinct, doesn't
have much to go on..... and nothing is quite as it first appears as he finds
himself in his old haunts of Leme and Copacabana, and in the
all-too-familiar murky terrain of corruption, secret lives, greed, and
fear.
Comment: This is the fourth book in the Inspector Espinosa series set in the
sultry streets of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In the author's own words, 'Espinosa
is an ordinary man. He is not a hero, he is not always fighting against
dangerous criminals, he doesn't get all the beautiful blondes and
brunettes that come cross his path. He is a public employee, a middle-aged
person, a solitary man. He could be our neighbor. But at the same time, he
has a critical mind and a romantic heart, he feels eccentric among his
professional peers and out of place in the world. He is not so ordinary, in
fact.'
If you like your mysteries to be all blood and guts and tidy endings,
move on, but if you're interested in a writer of thoughtful noir crime
fiction who includes Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler in his list of
favorite authors, and cites Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment as
his favorite novel, stop right here!
"Garcia-Roza exploits the Brazilian city's
seemliness and steaminess to perfection in tough but sensuous
language." -- Booklist (starred review).
"Garcia-Roza, who writes like nobody else in the world,
has produced altogether the most ebullient and delightful tale of serial
homicide you'll read this year."-- Kirkus.
This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in March 2005, and has been updated for the
February 2006 edition.
Click here to go to this issue.
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