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Book Cover |
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Excerpt |
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Irene asked him when he'd be coming home.
"We talked
about that yesterday," Silva said, and then regretted it. It would pain
her to know she'd been so drunk she couldn't remember.
"I . . . I miss
you," she said, in a small voice, slurring her speech. He took it for
what it was--a drunken attempt to apologize.
"And I miss
you, Irene. Now, let me talk to Maria de Lourdes."
Silva no longer
felt comfortable about leaving his wife alone, not since the day, almost
three months ago, when he'd come home to find her in a stupor on the
kitchen floor. She'd hit a corner of the table on the way down, and the
gash had bled profusely. He thought, at first, that she'd been shot,
there was so much blood on the tiles.
He'd promptly
hired Maria de Lourdes Krups, their former cleaning woman, as Irene's
full-time companion.
Despite her
somewhat Teutonic surname, Maria de Lourdes was a mulata from
Panama, fiercely loyal to Silva and infinitely patient with his
alcoholic wife. The loyalty stemmed from a favor he'd done her once, an
affair linked to her only son, like Silva's, now dead. |
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Synopsis |
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Tico Santos, a.k.a.,
"The Artist" is the most famous and skilled soccer player in Brazil. The
FIFA World Cup is thirteen days away, Brazil is hosting, and the
Artist's mother, Juraci Santos, has been kidnapped.
The Brazilian
Federal Police are now in possession of this political football. Their
feckless Director, Nelson Sampaio, quickly passes to Mario Silva, his
Chief Inspector--after informing Silva he suspects Argentina. Yes,
Argentina. The country.
Let the games begin.
Actually given the
fever pitch of football fans, and the national rivalries involved, it's
not such a farfetched theory. But aside from rabid soccer fans, A
Vine In The Blood has no shortage of suspects or clues for Chief
Inspector Silva and his team. A missing set of keys. A rival striker
named Joazinho, who was permanently disabled by an errant kick from the
Artist. The Artist's femme fatale girlfriend, Cintia Tadesco. Number's
racket crime czars, called bicheiros. The street drug Special K, or
ketamine, and a vine of mysteriously red bougainvilleas, which are even
mysterious to spell.
The
investigation has to move quickly; Inspector Silva knows the clock is
ticking. Two young maids were callously executed at the crime
scene--odds are Juraci Santos will share their fate
A Vine in the Blood
is the fifth book in the Chief Inspector Mario Silva Investigation mystery
series written
by Leighton Gage.
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Review |
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Author Leighton Gage has mastered the police
procedural and dropped it squarely into São Paolo, Brazil. Reading A
Vine in the Blood, his fifth Mario Silva novel, is like
watching a movie with great character actors inhabiting their roles. Add
in cracking dialog and a fabulous set designer and you have a
fast-paced, exotic, Oscar-nominee of a novel.
A great deal of the pleasure of A Vine in
the Blood comes from its glimpse into life in another world. São
Paolo is the largest city in the Southern hemisphere and the seventh
largest city on the planet. From jungle to asphalt, from soccer to the
number's racket, there's a abundance of material to explore--animal,
vegetable, mineral and criminal.
Crime forms the backbone of the book, but
Chief Inspector Silva's reactions to crime give the reader plenty to
mull over. At one point, Silva and Detective Arnaldo go to interview
Captain Miranda, an ex-employee of Section II, the former dictatorship's
torture squad. Miranda has murdered his way into becoming the top
bicheiro, or number's czar, in the county.
Before the interview can take place,
Captain Miranda's henchmen search Silva and Arnaldo and take their guns.
Arnaldo gets into a pissing contest with one of the bodyguards, but
Silva just goes with it, maintaining the curious sang-froid that
characterizes all his actions. Silva seems to have acquired the serenity
to accept the things he cannot change; he keeps his focus on the
goal--catching the bad guys. Silva's flexible acceptance of "things as
they are" is a big part of his charm. Much of his affect is in
his actions, even so, by book's end we feel like we've come to know
him--and like all addictive detectives--we want to know him better.
The book's title comes from Ezekiel
19:10. "Thy mother is like a vine in thy blood." The Artist's mother,
Juraci, is a vine that has more than a little poison in it, as the
bougainvilleas can attest. In keeping with her difficult nature, even
her ransom delivery has some nifty twists and turns. If you like a solid
mystery combined with the magic of armchair travel A Vine in the
Blood delivers them both. Leighton Gage has written a book that
vibrates with authenticity.
I rated this book a 9 out of
10. |
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