THE WAYS OF EVIL MEN by Leighton Gage

The Awana tribe in the rainforest of Brazil is dying: Only 41 Awana remain, and they know they are the last of their people. A matter of years only, and there will be no more Awana. But some person or persons felt the need to hurry things along. When Amati and his eight-year-old son return from a day of hunting, they find everyone in the village dead. No wounds, no signs of violence at all, but from the youngest child to the oldest citizen, all are dead. Poisoned, perhaps, but how? Amati is convinced that the white men from the nearest town are responsible. The local representative from the government for Indian affairs, Jade Calmon, demands that the deaths be investigated, but the local police chief says that what happens on the reservation is beyond the scope of his authority. The regional delegado de polícia is far too lazy to care what happens hundreds of miles away. But Jade is a tireless crusader, and she knows someone who knows someone who pulls Federal Inspector Mario Silva and his team into investigating. It isn't long before genocide mushrooms into another murder, a lynching, a kidnapping, a missing person, domestic abuse, betrayal, and still more murder. Silva and his team have their hands full just trying to get a racist, elitist, corrupt, and fearful populace to talk to them, never mind trying to exhume bodies and collect evidence (or even make phone calls) in the remote and deadly rainforest where even the most macho of men would never dare to be caught after dark.

The town of Azevedo will perhaps remind the reader of the Old West of the United States, where the nearest law enforcement was often too far away to be of any value, where white people repeatedly stole tribal lands and Native Americans were treated as either juvenile imbeciles or dangerous lunatics. The situations in this book may also bring to mind the premise of the film, Bad Day at Black Rock, in which a stranger in town encounters suspicion and the threat of violence, though no one in town will say why the town is so full of, well, evil. Luckily for Inspector Silva, he is not alone, as Spencer Tracy was in the film. Silva has his trusted team of detectives and medical examiner to help him; he also has the albatross of a very pretty, highly ambitious journalist figuratively draped around his neck. And the determination of that journalist provides an internal threat to the security of Silva's team that he could not have foreseen.

The Mario Silva series comes to a close with this seventh book and the sad, too soon, passing of author Leighton Gage last summer. And what a terrific and complex final story he has given us, condensing into highly readable form five centuries of continuous assaults on the indigenous people of Brazil, and the environmental disasters stemming from toxic mining and the continued decimation of the rainforest.  Gage neatly outlines the vast gulf between the lives of the haves and the have nots, not to mention the bigotry and corruption of both groups, all the while maintaining both an impending sense of danger and a sharp-witted camaraderie between the members of Silva's team. It is the humor, cynical though it may be, that prevents the reader from being crushed under the weight of the evil abounding in the small town of Azevedo. That humor, plus the humanity and unpredictability of Silva, a man whose work may be the law, but whose primary interest is justice, all make for wonderful reading.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

THE WAYS OF EVIL MEN

• Series: Chief Inspector Mario Silva
• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Soho Crime (January 21, 2014)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1616952725
• ISBN-13: 978-1616952723

A VINE IN THE BLOOD by Leighton Gage

In the wake of the recent kidnapping of a major-league baseball player in Colombia, comes this timely mystery -- only I read the ebook last spring, so maybe 'timely' is the wrong word; perhaps I should have said 'prescient.'

Brazil's (and the world's) finest football player loves his mother very much. When she's kidnapped, he's more than ready to pay the ransom. Problem is, the kidnapping occurs just prior to the beginning of World Cup play. Could this be the work of rival countries hoping to destroy Brazil's chances of winning? Could the mind behind it be the player's own fiancee, a beauty with grasping hands and a heart of "cold"? Could the mastermind be the team owner, who desperately needs money? Or the mobster who wants to crush the team owner? The servants? The imprisoned criminologist who moonlighted as a kidnapper? The kidnap and ransom plans were designed by someone who has carefully planned each step, every tiny detail. Except one, and that single misstep leads to double murder.

It's always a treat when Mario Silva's team of federal investigators work a case. The characters are defined mostly by their dialogue, something that was more common among mystery writers of old (Erle Stanley Gardner, for example, and the great Dashiell Hammett), and author Gage makes that dialogue sparkle. While the repartee among the investigators, or between the investigators and the witnesses/suspects entertains the reader and furthers the story, it also does much to reveal the characters' underlying natures. From 'Baby Face' Goncalves to (my favorite) Silva's aide, Arnaldo Nunes, from incidental characters like shop clerks and park rangers to major players like the football star's fiancee and the criminologist, each character is so well-defined by his dialogue that physical descriptions are rendered almost unnecessary.

The story, as with all of the books in this series, moves along at gallop. I love that the author, while allowing his team to make use of forensics, never lets the story's pace or tension droop due to technical or scientific explanations. Forensics support the story; forensics are NOT the story, praise be! And Mario Silva and his team don't let any grass grow under their feet, but at the same time, each of them seems very human. No superheroes here, just cops getting the job done, cops with wit and personality.

With each book I also have the pleasure of learning more about Brazil. Gage does a great job of weaving this information so tightly into the threads of the story that it never feels pedantic or confusing, but is a fascinating and fundamental part of the story. If you haven't tried this series yet, it's okay to start here, with this book, because these books are easily read out of order. But read them, yes, I urge you. Read them now; thank me later.

On sale: 12/27/2011

REVIEW: EVERY BITTER THING by Leighton Gage

The son of a high-ranking Venezuelan politician has been found dead, shot in the abdomen and brutally beaten, in an apartment in Brasilia. Chief Inspector Mario Silva of the Federal Police is called to investigate, and the pressure is on to bring the case to a quick resolution: Find the killer and keep the baying politicians at, well, bay. But Silva is too wily a politician himself, and too good a detective, to allow the pressure to get to him. A good thing, too. Within 24 hours Silva has found the same MO used in four other murders, each occurring in a different city. The only link between the victims is that each was aboard Flight 8101, Miami to São Paulo, on the same day four months earlier. Then Silva discovers two more victims, one killed using the same MO as the others but who was not on that flight; and a 15-year-old boy who was on the flight but died of a head injury in a jail cell within hours of his arrival in Brazil. Silva and his team of detectives have their hands full collecting evidence and testimony from all over Brazil and Miami, as well as warning possible future victims. But the killer isn't waiting around for them to do their jobs. The killer keeps killing.

I confess to being a tad fussy about crime fiction whose locales are non-Anglo countries. It isn't that I won't read such books -- I love Roger Smith's books set in South Africa, and Arnaldur Indridason's Icelandic mysteries, and so on -- but only that I often find an author will drench the reader in this other culture and land at the expense of story and characterization. A reader can spend more time trying to adjust to cultural nuances and sorting out names and locations than in simply enjoying a good story.

I'm happy to report this is not the case with Every Bitter Thing, by Leighton Gage. And yet Brazil is not simply an incidental setting; the reader will still enjoy a good taste of the Brazilian landscape and culture. But Gage weaves these things into his mystery so that they are truly a part of the story's fabric, all of it necessary, intriguing, and sometimes funny.

Told in third person, with limited subjectivity, what the reader learns about Silva and his team is only what is displayed on the job. We are not treated to their home lives and personal woes except insofar as they are referred to on the job. The team is just that, a team. They have a camaraderie born of experience and a mutual desire to get the job done, and done right. Honorable and upright, they disdain the corruption, laziness, and brutality they see throughout much of law enforcement. The team is: Arnaldo Nunes, a smart-ass of the first degree; nimble of wit but not an infallible interrogator. Haraldo 'Babyface' Gonçalves, he's thirty years old and looks a sweet and innocent twenty. Women tell him everything, but he's probably the most superstitious cop in the country. Hector Costa, Silva's nephew and a rising star in law enforcement, Hector heads up the Federal field office in São Paulo. And Silva himself, unflappable, far-sighted, and possessing the intangibles that make for great leadership, including a good sense of humor.

In some ways the story structure put me in mind of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct stories, as Gage rarely strays into the private lives of his cops, and yet makes fully-fleshed characters of each of them. The dialogue is snappy but not just for the sake of it. The snappiness is a result of the team's experience with each other and with other cops and citizens, and the dialogue either moves the plot forward or reveals something about the character speaking. Gage never becomes overly graphic or too lovingly dwells on the violence, nor does he involve the reader in tedious forensic explanations. The pace is quick, the atmosphere slightly hardboiled but leavened with cop humor. The reader may guess the killer's identity mid-way through the book but that won't make the team's procedural search any less entertaining, and the epilogue has such an eyebrow-raising twist that the reader is forced to stop, say 'whoa,' and completely reevaluate Silva and his team. I enjoyed this book so much that I've started back at the beginning of the series, and now have only one more title to read. I'm going to hate waiting another year or more for another book from Gage.

In the following excerpt, Silva and Arnaldo Nunes have arrived at the scene of the first murder. A civil cop, homicide detective Walter Pereira, is to fill them in on what the police have found so far but Pereira wants to talk about Silva's incompetent boss, Sampaio:

"What's with you," Arnaldo asked.

"Your goddamned boss is what's with me," Pereira said. "He's doing his dog and pony show as we speak. There's a television in one of the bedrooms. Want to have a look?"

"Not on your life," Arnaldo said.

Silva bent over to look at the damage to the apartment's front door.

"Perp did this?" he asked.

Pereira shook his head. "We did."

Silva studied the floor. A trail of blood stained the carpet.

"Let's not get off the subject," Pereira said. "Your goddamned boss–"

Silva waved a dismissive hand. "You don't have to tell me, Walter. I work with the man."

"The way I heard it, the filho da puta doesn't work at all. The way I heard it, you guys do all the work, and he takes the credit. He is, by the way, currently positioning himself to do just that. He's live on Channel Five."

"Of course he is," Arnaldo said. "His public demands it."

"His public doesn't know shit. They think the blowhard is a twenty-first-century Eliot Ness. What kind of a background does Sampaio have in law enforcement anyway?"

"None whatever," Silva said. "He was a corporate lawyer. He made a substantial contribution to the president's election campaign. The rest, as they say, is history."

"Watcha got?" Arnaldo asked.

"Just answer me this: is he, or is he not, a filho da puta?"

"He's a filho da puta of monumental proportions," Arnaldo said. "Watcha got?"

Pereira finally broke into a grin. The teeth under his mustache were movie-star white.

"I got it solved, is what I got," he said.

EVERY BITTER THING by Leighton Gage
ISBN 978-1-56947-845-5
Publication date: December, 2010
Soho Press

One more note: Leighton Gage is a regular contributor to the Murder Is Everywhere blog. His co-contributors include Timothy Hallinan, Cara Black, Dan Waddell, Yrsa Sigurdardottir, and the writing team of Michael Sears and Stan Trollip, aka Michael Stanley.