“When Raoni’s father was a boy, the tribe had numbered more than a hundred, but that was before a white man’s disease had reduced them by half.  In the years that followed, one girl after another had been born, but the girls didn’t stay; they married and moved on. It was the way of the Awana, the way of all the tribes. If the spirits saw fit to give them boys, the tribe grew; if girls, the tribe shrank. If it shrank too much, it died.
The Awana were doomed, they all knew it, but for the end to have come so suddenly was a horrible and unexpected blow.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky (JAN 26, 2014)

Leighton Gage, who spent a great deal of his time in Brazil, used his extensive knowledge of the country’s political, economic, and social climate to create an outstanding series of police procedurals. His latest, The Ways of Evil Men, published posthumously, opens with a heartbreaking scene. Anati, a member of the Awana tribe who live in the rainforest, goes hunting with his eight-year-old son, Raoni. When the two return to their village they discover that all thirty-nine members of their tribe are dead. Who killed these men, women, and children? Jade Calmon, an employee of the federal government’s National Indian Foundation, will not stop asking questions until she learns the truth. Since the local law enforcement authorities have no love for the Awana, Jade is forced to pull strings in order to bring in the big guns: Mario Silva, Chief Inspector of the Brazilian Federal Police, Arnaldo Nunes, Silva’s partner, and a support team that includes other agents and an assistant medical examiner.

Why can’t the locals investigate this crime? The nearest town, Azevedo, is run by the Big Six, corrupt landowners (including the mayor) who have contempt for the Indians and covet their land. To insure that no one gets in their way, they have the parish priest, the head of the local police, and a so-called environmental watchdog on their payroll. Only incorruptible law enforcement professionals like Mario Silva can be trusted to apprehend the guilty parties. Silva travels to Azevedo, where he and his colleagues interview Osvaldo Neto and his wife, Amanda, the owners of the town’s only bar, restaurant, and hotel. Osvaldo is part Indian and has disdain for the bigots, liars, thieves, adulterers, and murderers who patronize his establishment. Fortunately, Silva is a tenacious detective who relishes a challenge. He will need to be clever, devious, and lucky to solve what will turn out to be a complex and ugly case.

The Ways of Evil Men is a hard-hitting and engrossing novel that lives up to its title. The villains (both male and female) are utterly vile. They frame the innocent, bribe people to turn a blind eye to their transgressions, and enrich themselves through legal and illegal means. Another person who takes an interest in these outrageous goings-on ia a fearless female reporter named Maura Mandel; she risks her life, expecting to make headlines with what she hopes will be a sensational story. This is a compelling, gritty, and atmospheric tale with lively descriptive writing, dark humor, and sharply-crafted dialogue. Readers will admire Silva and his associates, who are determined to prove that no one–no matter how wealthy, influential, and arrogant–is above the law.

Those of us who admire Leighton Gage’s talent, creativity, and integrity will miss him greatly.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 13 readers
PUBLISHER:	Soho Crime (January 21, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Leighton Gage
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Dying Gasp Every Bitter Thing Buried Strangers our interview with Leighton Gage

Bibliography:

• Blood of the Wicked (2008)
• Buried Strangers (2009)
• Dying Gasp (2010)
• Every Bitter Thing (2010)
• A Vine in the Blood (2011)
• Perfect Hatred (2013)
• The Ways of Evil Men (January 2014)

“Yes of course it was interesting to take part in the ritual, that was what we had come here to do. It was slightly terrifying the first time, all of the screaming and the smoke; in that way it was a little like your experience coming up the river at night, except that you are all very close together in one giant, enclosed hut. Seeing God was worthwhile, of course. I doubt that anything in our Western tradition would have shown Him to me so personally.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate  (JUN 07, 2011)

What an apt title! Patchett at her best is a magician of wonder, and this is indeed among her best.  I count her Bel Canto as one of the best books I have ever read. I have read each of her others looking for the same quality, finding it to a large extent in The Magician’s Assistant, but being quite disappointed with her rather prosaic Run, which preceded this one. I found myself reading State of Wonder slowly and more slowly, allowing myself to sink into her depth of character, enjoying the deliberate pace of her revelation, reluctant to start another chapter until I had digested the one just finished. The urge to spin out a book for as long as possible is rare for me — but I remember it well from reading Bel Canto, a pivotal experience which reawakened a love of fiction that has never let up.

The book begins as a sort of Heart of Darkness. Marina Singh, 42 years of age, a physician turned pharmacologist, agrees to go to the Amazon rain forest where her employers, a big Minnesota pharmaceutical company, are developing a promising new fertility drug. The researcher in charge of the study, seventy-something Dr. Annick Swenson, has cut off most communication, refusing all electronic contact, refusing even to reveal the location of her camp, relying only on the occasional letter to get carried down by boat to Manaus. The aerogramme that arrives as the book opens reports the sad news that Marina’s lab-mate Anders Eckman, who had been sent down some months before to investigate, has died of fever. Marina flies to Brazil to complete Anders’ report and find out the details of his death. What makes her quest doubly alarming is that the intimidating Dr. Swenson had been Marina’s supervisor years before at Johns Hopkins, when she had made a crucial mistake in the operating room that caused her to abandon the practice of medicine and turn to research, a trauma that lingers with her still.

But if you think you know where Patchett is heading you would be wrong. She has a way of setting up a situation that you view with dread, only to shift it, open it, work her peculiar alchemy on it. The first hint of this is in a performance at the Manaus opera house, a La Scala in the midst of the jungle; appropriately, the opera is Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, whose hero journeys into Hades to bring back life. Manaus already seems like an anteroom to Hell, a tawdry viewing-platform for tourists, and Patchett does not belittle the many dangers waiting in the Amazon jungle along its smaller tributaries. But she responds to its wonder also, starting with the night sky: “Beyond the spectrum of darkness she saw the bright stars scattered across the table of the night sky and felt as if she had never seen such things as stars before. […] She saw the textbook of the constellations, the heroes of mythology posing on fields of ink.” Having visited the Amazon myself, I found it uncanny how well Patchett could capture such near-mystical experiences as well as the mundane ones, the total isolation of the living forest only miles from the tourist traffic and T-shirts.

Yet this is no mere travel book. Marina Singh’s real exploration is her discovery of other people and of herself. Annick Swenson turns out to be a far more complex character than the forbidding paragon she thought she knew. Her immediate colleagues and the tribe they are studying form a fascinating interconnected society; both the ethnology and the medical research are pretty convincing, at least to a layman. There turn out to be reasons for Dr. Swenson’s secrecy, and moral issues that play an increasing part. Marina will find her endurance, skills, loyalties, and even her love tested. As in all her best books, Patchett gradually creates a special space, a kind of sacred enclave within the bounds of realism. Seen with a skeptical eye, some of what happens as the novel nears its climax may seem implausible, though it is certainly exciting. But Patchett banishes skepticism, a magician-monarch ruling over a land of wonder. What she enshrines there is deeply, movingly human.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 1,145 readers
PUBLISHER:	Harper (June 7, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Ann Patchett
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: This is a Story of a Happy Marriage And some other geographically similar… Cellophane by Marie Arana Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes by Daniel L. Everett

Bibliography:

• The Patron Saint of Liars (1992)
• Taft (1994)
• The Magician’s Assistant (1997)
• Bel Canto (2001)
• Run (2007)
• State of Wonder (2011)

Nonfiction:

• Truth and Beauty (2004)
• What Now? (2008)
• This is the Story of a Happy Marriage (November 2013)

“You think I’m stupid? You think I don’t know how things work in this country? How the rich and powerful get justice and the rest of us can go to hell? … Your superiors are on your necks. You need someone to blame. It’s as simple as that.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (DEC 06, 2010)

In Leighton Gage’s Every Bitter Thing, Chief Inspector Mario Silva of Brazil’s Federal Police is called in when Juan Rivas, the son of Venezuelan foreign minister Jorge Rivas, is found shot and brutally beaten. This “would be a killing with political implications, the kind of case he hated above all others.” When Silva finds out that Rivas is not the only victim–the national database shows that four other men were slain in exactly the same manner–his next step is to figure out why these particular people were targeted. Knowing the motive, Mario hopes, will quickly lead to a suspect.

Silva, Arnaldo Nunes, Haraldo (“Babyface”) Gonçalves, and Hector Costa, set off on a wild-goose chase involving a shyster lawyer, an unlucky airline flight, a teenager busted for smuggling drugs, a mysterious priest, and a hapless burglar. After interviewing a host of witnesses and following up dozens of leads, the detectives are more baffled than ever. Fortunately, their perseverance pays off when the pieces of the puzzle finally fall into place.

Every Bitter Thing is earthy, cynical, and engrossing. The author revisits some familiar themes, including the chasm between Brazil’s haves and have-nots, the usefulness of “connections,” and the devastating effects of grief. Leighton Gage, who offers ample clues for those who like to guess “whodunit,” also provides colorful characters, witty dialogue, crisp writing, and an exotic setting. Gage knows Brazil, and he gives us a fascinating taste of life there, especially in the demimonde. Mario and his cohorts show once again that the work of a homicide detective is decidedly unglamorous. The long hours, red herrings, lying witnesses, arrogant bosses, and elusive suspects make this a profession suitable only for the most persistent, clever, and patient individuals.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 28 readers
PUBLISHER:	Soho Crime (November 16, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Leighton Gage
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Ways of Evil Men Dying Gasp Buried Strangers Our interview with Leighton Gage

Bibliography:

• Blood of the Wicked (2008)
• Buried Strangers (2009)
• Dying Gasp (2010)
• Every Bitter Thing (2010)
• A Vine in the Blood (2011)
• Perfect Hatred (2013)
• The Ways of Evil Men (January 2014)

“Guests would arrive in armoured 4x4s or mud spattered jeeps, tanned men with bellies and moustaches, who chatted by the pool all weekend gripping beers and caipirinhas; stunning wives on sunloungers with tinted hair and manicured nails and cosmetically enhanced bodies, rotating in the heat like rotisserie chickens.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (NOV 12, 2010)

The main character in James Scudamore’s novel Heliópolis is twenty-seven-year-old Ludo. Born in terrible poverty in a Sao Paulo Favela (shantytown), Ludo and his mother had the good fortune to come to the attention of Rebecca, the British, charity-minded wife of one of the city’s richest businessmen, Zeno (Zé) Generoso. Zé and Rebecca, who have one daughter, Melissa, formally adopted Ludo, and he has a privileged upbringing which comes with a price; he’s constantly reminded of his humble beginnings, his good fortune and how much he owes to his benefactors. Separated from his mother who remains as the cook at Zé’s country estate, Ludo has no self-identity. His life is shaped by the desires of the Generoso family, and while he may be the adopted son, he’s little more than a trained house-serf.

The novel explores the vast disparities between the rich and the poor, and just how the characters adapt to their respective roles in this overwhelmingly non-static society. To Zé, it’s simple: “there is no such thing as a middle class, and no such thing as a non-criminal underclass.” It’s “us” (Zé and his fellow plutocrats) vs. the rest of Brazil. Zé and his family live into a fortified compound within the exclusive Angel Park community. Life in Angel Park has a surreal quality, but at the same time the wealthy who sprawl inside these impregnable walls live with incredible paranoia when it comes to the issue of security. Here’s Zé’s mansion:

“The house he flies home to every weeknight is a fortified compound, buffered by terraced ponds and beds of hostile spike shrubs. His self-watering lawns are patrolled by two pure-bred fighting mastiffs, which roll over on demand for Zé and his family, but would take the leg off an uninvited guest. His palm trees contain motion-sensitive cameras connected to the hub of technology in the guardhouse; if you disturbed so much as a blade of his grass, Zé would know about it. And that’s just the beginning. Before you even get to the house you have to enter the compound itself, which is defended by bundles of oiled razor wire and a tooled up crew that resembles a private army rather than a team of security guards. It would take a thief with Special Forces training to get past the outer walls, let alone breach Zé’s last line of defence, and even if you did, you wouldn’t find him—he’d be sealed in his tungsten panic room long before you got in.”

Heliópolis is actually the name of the largest favela in Sao Paulo, but for this novel the term could refer to the lives of the extremely wealthy set–people who never travel at street level, but who instead move from building to building via helicopter:

“Melissa’s father, Zé Fischer Carnicelli, hasn’t been down to street level in the city for over fifteen years. He lives in a gated community of 30,000 inhabitants, way out of town, and is flown there to his downtown office every morning in a helicopter that has the word Predator painted graffiti-style over its nose, along with gnashing teeth and a pair of evil yellow eyes. He’s approaching retirement, but he still keeps regular office hours. A chauffeur drives him between his house and the helicopter, then back again in the evening. During the day, he might hop to another high-rise to meet someone for lunch, or to attend an afternoon meeting, but he never touches the pavement. It’s not just a question of safety; if he went by car he could get snared in a traffic jam lasting hours. Nobody who’s anybody gets driven to work in the city these days.”

When the novel begins, Ludo works in a nebulous “communications” company in Sao Paolo. His repulsive boss, Oscar, a lifelong friend of Zé’s, vacillates when it comes to his attitude to Ludo. On one hand, Ludo seems to enjoy “special treatment” as an employee who is hired through strings pulled, and yet there are moments when Oscar zones in on Ludo and humiliates him in front of a room full of business associates. Ludo typically arrives late to work, and spends large amounts of time snoozing curled around the base of the toilet.

The novel begins with Ludo sleeping with his adoptive sister and sometime mistress, Melissa. She’s now married to Ernesto, the plump well-meaning son of another wealthy Brazilian family. Apart from the money connection, it’s an odd match. Ernesto, who works interminably on an ever-elusive PhD, is obsessed with the plight of Brazil’s underclass, and while he interviews people for his Sisyphean project, his wife Melissa lives like a princess in a tower and spends lavishly at the most exclusive shops.

The novel is divided between the past and the present. A large portion of the book details scenes of Ludo’s childhood as he and his mother jump into action for the Generoso family every weekend. Ludo and his mother live at Zé’s country estate which is a sort of exclusive Disneyland for Zé, his friends and the business associates he invites for the weekend. No expense is spared for these mind-boggling weekends of endless gluttony and pleasure. Ludo’s present focuses on a new advertising campaign geared towards the inhabitants of the favelas. Advertising executives vie to provide the slogan for the new supermarket chain geared for the poorest of Brazil’s inhabitants. These scenes underscore just how out of touch Brazil’s upper echelons are with the rest of the country.

Heliópolis offers fascinating insights into Brazilian life and the vast chasms between the rich and the poor, and Ludo is a bridge figure who straddles both worlds. He’s useful to his masters and yet he doesn’t fit in either world–not the skyscrapers and the country estates or the fetid squalor of the favelas. Ludo fails to connect with anyone on any meaningful level. He even unintentionally manages to patronize the office cleaner, and it’s through this relationship that it becomes clear that Ludo has no place in society.

Heliópolis was longlisted for the 2009 Booker prize. Not that I care–the books I like never win. I liked Heliópolis but it wasn’t perfect. Ultimately there’s something unsatisfying with the tale. Richly evocative when it comes to locations and atmosphere, many of the characters fail to connect as living, breathing human beings, and its denouement feels somewhat contrived.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 4 readers
PUBLISHER:	Europa Editions (October 20, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	James Scudamore
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Also set in Brazil: Buried Strangers by Leighton Gage

Bibliography:

• The Amnesia Clinic (2006; January 2007 in US)
• Heliopolis (2009; October 2010 in US)

“They say they come here to see the river and the jungle,” the priest went on. “Sometimes it’s true. Mostly, it’s just sex tourism, pure and simple.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage (FEB 13, 2010)

The whispers and rumors of the existence of snuff films first appeared in western culture some decades ago. Since then, it’s been said that snuff films–real snuff films don’t exist–that they’re nothing more than urban myths. Common sense tells me that if a lucrative trade thrives in the international black market trafficking of human organs, then real snuff films must exist. And if there’s a market for snuff films, then what better place to make them than in a country in which the poor can disappear without a trace.

Author Leighton Gage’s third Chief Inspector Mario Silva mystery Dying Gasp centres on a Brazilian snuff film ring. I’ve read all three of Gage’s novels and while they tackled different social problems in Brazil, Dying Gasp is the darkest, grimmest to date. Given the subject matter, that shouldn’t be too surprising. If you haven’t tried the Mario Silva novels yet, and if you enjoy series detective novels with an international, social/political theme, then give Leighton Gage a try. His novels are a cut above most of the detective novels on the market.

Dying Gasp begins with the disappearance of two young girls. Women go missing every day in Brazil, but the difference this time is that one of the girls is Marta, the 15-year–old granddaughter of one of the country’s most powerful politicians. While the poor vanish silently into Brazil’s vast networks of crime, that doesn’t happen with Marta. Marta’s unpleasant grandfather, Deputado Roberto Malan, pulls strings until he gets Chief Inspector Mario Silva on the case. Malan considers Marta a “disrespectful little bitch,” but he’s under pressure from his son and daughter-in-law to find the girl. Marta was last seen with her 18-year-old girlfriend Andrea, and by the time Mario Silva is roped into the case, the girls have been missing for weeks, and the trail is now stone-cold.

Meanwhile in Amsterdam, a series of events leads to a break in the case of an international snuff film ring. As the search for the major players in the films that cater to the sick tastes of the wealthy widens to Brazil, Mario Silva realizes that his search for Marta is also connected to his search for the snuff film ring. Silva has reason to believe that Marta is being held captive in a bordello which specializes in underage girls, and in a race against time, Silva and trusted detectives Arnaldo and Hector Costa travel to Manaus, a hellhole in the heart of Amazonia. In Manaus, Silva must battle against corruption and also against his old enemy, the quintessentially evil Claudia Andrade (Buried Strangers).

Mario Silva, as an incorruptible police inspector must deal with all sorts of people–including his bosses and the “superiors” who turn his stomach. Silva negotiates a corrupt, sick world, a world that he cannot ultimately change but one in which he simply does the best he can.

In Dying Gasp Gage once again delivers a terrific mystery coupled with a tale that explores the many social problems of Brazil–a country plagued with crime and corruption, and with a vast divide between the poor and the wealthy. I first came across Gage through his second novel, Buried Strangers, a story in which Gage describes the social inequities of Brazil through a crime story involving organ trafficking. While many Brazilian crime films explore the life of Brazil’s poverty-wracked ghettos, Gage’s tales argue that the poor are often the tools of the rich–either through criminal enterprises, or simply as human husks to be utilized and harvested as unwilling donors for the wealthy. But Gage also shows the inescapable connections between the worst, most evil aspects of human exploitation and those wealthy enough to indulge in the results as recreational distractions–even as they kid themselves that their hands are clean. In Dying Gasp, Gage once again creates an edge-of-the-seat read, and through this dark tale, he reveals the intricate web between the rich and poor, the exploiters and the exploited and those who try to carve a niche for themselves in between these upper and lower echelons of Brazilian society.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 21 readers
PUBLISHER:	Soho Crime (January 1, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Leighton Gage
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Ways of Evil Men Every Bitter Thing Buried Strangers our interview with Leighton Gage

Bibliography:

• Blood of the Wicked (2008)
• Buried Strangers (2009)
• Dying Gasp (2010)
• Every Bitter Thing (2010)
• A Vine in the Blood (2011)
• Perfect Hatred (2013)
• The Ways of Evil Men (January 2014)