Leighton Gage's latest

A good start to Dying Gasp, Leighton Gage's third novel about Chief Inspector Mario Silva of Brazil's Federal Police:

"The bomb aboard the number nine tram claimed seventeen lives. Sixteen were passengers.

"The seventeenth was the driver of a nearby postal truck. Mail from his shattered vehicle littered the cobblestones in front of the Museum of the Tropics and fluttered, like tiny flags, from the branches of the linden trees."

That's a nice bit of lyricism, perhaps unexpected in the description of a terrorist act's aftermath.

Another early chapter has Silva acknowledge what might be the most calculatingly reprehensible act I have ever read by a crime fiction protagonist who is ostensibly a good man. Moreover, Silva's own rashness and stupidity may have forced him into the act. I'm not sure this will play a large role in the story, but it does remind me of what Gage said about Silva and his colleague in the first part of last year's Detectives Beyond Borders interview:

"Silva and Hector Costa are rare cops by Brazilian standards, rare because they’ve both achieved positions of influence while retaining, and often acting out of, a sense of justice. Please note that I’m not using the word honest. Silva is not honest. Costa isn’t either. They’re merely just. In Brazil, honest men seldom seek out careers as cops. And if they do, their likelihood of promotion is slight. Silva and Costa are realists. They know, from the very beginning, that if they want to enforce the spirit of the law, they’re often going to have to break the letter of it."

© Peter Rozovsky 2009