Sheep's head revisited: A Bouchercon memory

Photo by the late Leighton Gage.
 Appalling food item courtesy 
of Yrsa Sigurðardóttir.

  My bags are packed, I'm ready to go, but the taxi won't be blowing its horn until Wednesday.

As I eagerly await my flight to Bouchercon 2014 in Long Beach, bursting with jealousy of friends who are already there, here's a photo from Bouchercon 2009 in Indianapolis. I post it just so I can use the headline again.

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

Sheep's head revisited

I've been fond of Yrsa Sigurðardóttir since Bouchercon 2008 in Baltimore when, on a glorious fall day, we chatted about the collapse of her country's economy.

(Indianapolis, 2009. Photo by
your humble blogkeeper) 

At Indianapolis in 2009, Yrsa was part both of the first convention panel I ever moderated and also of a group that made its frequent cigarette breaks so much fun that I wanted to take up smoking at an age when most people have already quit many times.

Yrsa and I have stuffed ourselves with dim sum in San Francisco and rung up bar tabs in Bristol. In short, a crime fiction convention would not be a crime fiction convention without Yrsa and her husband, Oli, two of the most popular and hospitable figures on the convention circuit.

But something was missing from the just-concluded Crimefest 2012: Yrsa brought no Icelandic food specialties or enamel-searing spirits with which to force the delicacies down our throats. Two years earlier, she had brought hákarl, a pungent fermented shark that, according to Wikipedia, even many Icelanders never eat. And the schnapps that went with it was pure, burning volcanic effluvia. I can't even show you what Yrsa brought to Bouchercon 2011 in St. Louis. So I'll let Leighton Gage do it instead.

So, Yrsa, if you read this, what will you bring us in Cleveland?

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

The hero in the bathtub

A few months ago, I wrote about a charming tribute Andrea Camilleri paid Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö in his novel The Track of Sand. Sjöwall and Wahlöö accord similar tribute to another crime writer in The Fire Engine That Disappeared (1969), fifth in the Martin Beck series:

"He also drank some coffee and cognac and watched an old American gangster film on television. Then he got his bed ready and lay in the bathtub reading Raymond Chandler's The Lady in the Lake, every now and then taking a sip of cognac which he had placed within reach on the toilet seat."

Who said Swedes don't know how to live? A recent Detectives Beyond Borders post asked "Who is the hero in a Sjöwall and Wahlöö novel?" There's your answer: If you know what a character likes to read, he's your protagonist.

***

On the other side of the Atlantic, I wonder if Every Bitter Thing, Leighton Gage's fourth novel featuring Inspector Mario Silva of Brazil's Federal Police, has been translated into Spanish and, if so, how well the book sells in Venezuela. Not that the novel names Hugo Chávez, at least not early on, but Chavistas might frown at several references to "the Clown."

How do you feel about such topical references in crime fiction? What are some of your favorites?

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

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

Olha, que coisas mais feias!

Leighton Gage writes about the ugly side of a beautiful country: Brazil.

"You can believe in cops who murder people because there are cops who murder people," Gage told Detectives Beyond Borders last year. "You can believe in people that will kill you for your cell phone because there are people that will kill you for your cell phone; you can believe in the impunity of the rich, because it’s a fact that rich Brazilians seldom go to jail – no matter how grave their offense."

Now you can catch up with the corruption. I'll send Gage's second Mario Silva novel, Buried Strangers, and the soon-to-be-released third book, Dying Gasp (one book per person), to the two readers who make the best cases for why they should get a book. In the meantime, read excerpts from both novels at Gage's Web site.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Murder is Everywhere in the blogosphere

Another group of crime writers from around the globe has banded together to form a collective blog. Murder is Everywhere is Leighton Gage, author of the Mario Silva series set in Brazil; Cara Black, whose Aimée Leduc investigations take readers all over Paris; Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip, collectively known as Michael Stanley and the authors of the Detective Kubu mysteries, set in Botswana; Iceland's Yrsa Sigurdardòttir; and, from the exotic land of England, Dan Waddell.

Initial offerings include Gage's account of a crime reporter from northern Brazil, with emphasis on crime and reporter.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Detectives beyond glitches: International crime fiction on the radio

Missed Bouchercon? Still have a hunger for international crime fiction? You can hear an archived version of Leighton Gage's Blog Talk Radio Webcast with Yrsa Sigurdardòttir, Michael Stanley, Stuart Neville and Cara Black. Click here to hear the program, Around the World in Crime Fiction, first broadcast today. That address again: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Leighton-Gage.

Technical glitches marred the show's first few minutes, but you can get around that by hitting download rather than play, then advancing your player to 3:15, at which point the problem clears up, and discussion ensues.

I especially liked some of Yrsa's observations about the exigencies of writing about crime in a country where everyone knows everyone else, as well as some suggestions from Stanley Trollip (half of the Michael Stanley writing team) about South African crime authors.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Me llamo Peter, plus international crime on the radio

The good folks at Yareah Magazine: Literature, arts and Myths. Literatura arte y mitos have reprinted one of my blog posts as a short article in their October issue.

"The detective who almost loved Berlioz" is my contribution to an issue featuring articles in English and Spanish about cover boy Emile Zola.

***

Detectives Beyond Borders friend Leighton Gage takes his panel-moderation skills to blogtalkradio.com this Saturday, October 24th at 12:30 p.m. Eastern time. He'll host "Around the World in Crime Fiction," a discussion with four more D. Beyond Borders favorites: Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, Michael Stanley, Stuart Neville and Cara Black, and they'll field calls from listeners. If you miss the live broadcast, the program will be archived for a month.

Tune in, click on, and support international crime fiction.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Bouchercon IV: Among the headhunters ...

... and I don't mean the kind who specialize in executive job searches. Tamar Myers' discussion of her novel set in the former Belgian Congo was a highlight of today's entertaining panel called "Murder at the Edge of the Map."

Myers is the author of more than thirty mysteries in two series, one set amid the Pennsylvania Dutch and another in the world of antiques. One presumes none of this prepared her fans for a novel that stems from her childhood experiences as the daughter of missionaries in Africa among a tribe called headhunters at the time.

Old friend Yrsa Sigurðardóttir was on this panel as well along with Christopher G. Moore and Stanley Trollip, one half of the writing team known as Michael Stanley. This meant fifty-five minutes of tales and observations from Iceland, Thailand and Botswana in addition to Congo, and I can think of no pleasanter way to pass the convention time.

A salute to Leighton Gage, a prince among moderators.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

CrimeFest, Day II: The spirit is willing, and the flesh makes a pretty good go as well

My own highlight from Crimefest 2009, Day II? Perhaps it was Jo Nesbø's English translator, Don Bartlett, relieving me of anxieties about how to pronounce Nesbø's name. If "Joe Nesbow" is good enough for the man who translates his books, it's good enough for me.

Or maybe it was L.C. Tyler's professed admiration for Allan Guthrie. Tyler writes comic cozy mysteries; Guthrie's work is anything but cozy. One author's respect for another who writes fiction of a different type is one of those salutary, mind-opening reminders that make events like this a joy.

Another was Leighton Gage's answer that his books begin with plot. If my memory serves me well, he was the only one of eight writers on two panels who gave that answer to the "Plot or character?" question.

Stephen Booth offered the disarming admission that "I didn't want to write about middle-aged alcoholics because other people had done it better" and the warning that too faithful a portrayal of procedure can be deadly in a police procedural.

Ros Schwartz, Dagger-winning translator of Dominique Manotti, offered shocking assessments of the miserable working conditions of literary translators in much of Europe and contrasted these with the far better environment for translators in the Scandinavian countries.

Håkan Nesser, in answer to a question about Nordic authors' reputation for dourness, noted their penchant for social criticism: "If your mission is to criticize society, you can't be very comical." (Editor's note: Your humble blogkeeper is author of an article on humor in Nordic crime fiction, including Nesser's. I believe that the general seriousness of crime fiction from the Nordic countries throws such humor as there is into especially sharp relief.)

Declan Burke, Chris Ewan, Steve Mosby and Kevin Wignall made up a panel on writing about villains. An observation of Mosby's neatly encapsulated the way the line between hero and villain can blur: "Every villain is the hero of his own story."

See the day's complete program here. And Burke discharged his bar debt in a prompt, gentlemanly manner.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

CrimeFest — and what I'll miss by being there

CrimeFest 2009 opens Thursday with an international galaxy of crime-fiction stars. I'll be there, too.

Among those stars is Leighton Gage, author of the Inspector Mario Silva series set in Brazil. I've just started Buried Strangers, the second in the series, but that's enough to report on the opening chapters' deftly executed hook.

Amid brief reintroductions of character conflicts from the first novel, Blood of the Wicked, Gage portrays discovery of what appears a crime horrendous in its scale and barbarity. Any number of authors might have given us pounding hearts, breathless adjectives and appalled attempts to come to grips with the enormity of— but you've read that all before.

I will say no more except to suggest that Gage's severely understated execution of the scenes is one hell of an attention grabber.

Read the Detectives Beyond Borders interview with Leighton Gage here. And next year, read the third Mario Silva mystery, Dying Gasp.

======

As CrimeFest gets under way Thursday in Bristol, England, one of America's greatest crime writers, Elmore Leonard, will be reading from his new novel, answering questions and signing books at the Free Library back in Philadelphia.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Leighton Gage, S.J. Rozan at Philly crime-fiction brunch

Leighton Gage, author of the Chief Inspector Mario Silva mysteries, set in Brazil, joins S.J. Rozan at this Sunday's Robin's Bookstore Crime Fiction Book Club brunch.

The food starts at 1 p.m., followed by author presentations, discussion and questions and answers at 2 p.m. It all happens at Les Bons Temps, 114 South 12th Street, Philadelphia, 215-238-9100.

Read the Detectives Beyond Borders interview with Leighton Gage here.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Non-traditional book distribution and other non-fictional news

Via Crime Scraps comes the news that a truckload of the Spanish edition of Jo Nesbø's The Redbreast was hijacked in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Here on the North American landmass, Sandra Ruttan was happy to report receiving author's copies of her novel What Burns Within even though the box containing them had been ripped open and one of the books "liberated along the way."

Here's hoping that the hijackers and liberators enjoy their books and that the authors get the royalties they deserve.

Back in South America, Brazil's government wants to fine all foreigners who visit the Amazon wilderness without government permission. Under a bill the government plans to send to the country's Congress, those caught in the Amazon without a permit from military and justice authorities could be fined $60,000, according to the Associated Press.

"We want the world to visit the region. But we want them to tell us when they’re coming and what they’re going to do,” said National Justice Secretary Romeu Tuma Jr., who added that the government was looking at Brazilian organizations in the Amazon for possible illegal activities.

According to the AP, "The bill reflects suspicions among conservative politicians and the military that foreign nongovernmental organizations working to help Indians and save the rain forest are actually attempting to wrest the Amazon and its riches away from Brazil."

“We have information that some international groups disguised as NGOs have come to carry out bioprospecting and have entered public and indigenous lands to try and influence their cultures,” Tuma is quoted as having said. “There is piracy and the theft of (traditional) knowledge in the region.”

Sounds to me like a story idea for Leighton Gage.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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Leighton Gage on crime and crime fiction in Brazil, Part II

Leighton Gage is the author of Blood of the Wicked and the forthcoming Buried Strangers, both from Soho Crime and both featuring Chief Inspector Mario Silva of Brazil's Federal Police. In Part II of his interview with Detectives Beyond Borders, Gage talks politics and answers a question about the state of crime fiction in Brazil. To the latter, he offers an answer similar to ones I've received about crime fiction in Tunisia and in the Palestinian territories: If you can't afford books, you can't read them, crime fiction or otherwise.

(Read Part I of the interview with Leighton Gage here.)
===================================

Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has a background as a leftist and a labor activist. What difference has this made as far as police violence, land rights, and other issues that concern you in Blood of the Wicked and in future novels?

Virtually none. Unfortunately.

Parenthetically, how did Lula go from being feared as a wild man to being respected as a moderating influence so quickly? How much of this is due to even more radical South American leaders such as Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez?

To begin with, the fear of Lula was both logical and overrated. Logical, because you had this labor leader with a grade-school education. And he was threatening to take over a government owing so much money that a default could have caused a meltdown in the world’s financial system. Overrated, because Lula surrounded himself with responsible financial advisers from the very beginning and declared, long before the election, that he had no intention of not meeting Brazil’s obligations.

He’s still hated by many of Brazil’s elite, but he has clearly distanced himself from the far left. He doesn’t speak ill of Chavez or Morales or even of Castro, but he doesn’t go out of his way to strengthen relationships either. He has successfully steered a middle course, eschewing offensive rhetoric. And he continued to do so even after Bolivia’s expropriation and nationalization of the Brazilian National Petroleum Company’s multi-billion dollar assets in Bolivia. Argentina has moved closer to Chavez’s Venezuela. Colombia has moved further away. Brazil continues to follow its own course – right down the middle.

De Gaulle once said “Brazil is not a serious country.” The statement went on to become much quoted in diplomatic circles. Lula hates it. He wants Brazil to have firm recognition for its importance in South America and the world. He wants a permanent seat on the Security Council of the United Nations, and to that end he is being careful not to offend anyone. He’s even sent troops to enforce the peace in Haiti (the UN detachment is being run by a Brazilian general), and he’s sending financial and material aid to a number of nations in Africa.

By all intents, he seems to be getting his message across. And for Brazil’s poor he can do no wrong. His approval rating, even after a recent spate of corruption scandals that would have brought down most presidents in most democracies, is holding firm at about 55%. That’s pretty good for a guy who never got past the American equivalent of the sixth grade.

Police violence seems to be especially notorious in Brazil. Is it in fact any worse than in, say, Argentina? If so, why?

During the recent dictatorships, all three countries in the Southern cone were about on a par when it came to police violence, so it isn’t as if the Brazilians have a patent on it. But these days, an ordinary citizen doesn’t have to worry too much about the cops in Argentina and Chile. Their governments pay them reasonably well and keep an eye out for abuses.

Brazil, unfortunately, is different. It’s tough to raise a family on the salary of an average Brazilian cop. Many, if not most, look for other sources of income. Those sources can include evictions (as in the case of evicting landless workers from land they’ve occupied), extortion, “losing” evidence, and “cleaning up neighborhoods”. It doesn’t help the situation, either, that being a cop in Brazil is more dangerous than it is in Argentina or Chile and a lot more dangerous than it is in the United States or Western Europe. Cops are targets, often losing their lives just because they are cops. They respond in kind, dealing out death to people they regard as threats. All too often they’re wrong in their assessments. But by that time it’s often too late, and their superiors, cops themselves, turn a blind eye to the error.

You occasionally give readings in Brazil. How is your work received there? Who is your audience? Are any translation deals in the works, whether into Portuguese or into other languages?

When I give readings in Brazil, I give them mostly for foreigners, and I always give them in English. My European agent is working on foreign rights, and I expect my work to come out in French, German, Italian and Spanish before all too long. But I’m doubtful about Portuguese. And, in fact, I’m very happy with that. Most Brazilians speak and read only Portuguese. When Blood finally appears in that language, if it ever does, my Brazilian friends aren’t going to like it. I’m going to take a lot of flak for washing dirty laundry in public. Some of those friends are landowners, one is a cop, and one is a priest. All three categories take heavy hits in Blood. I’m not worried about the landless. If they can read at all, they probably don’t read books, and it’s even less likely they read fiction.

How popular is crime fiction in Brazil? Of the two Brazilian crime writers I’ve read, one is an academic who named his protagonist for a philosopher (Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza), and the other is a “serious” and respected writer by any standard (Rubem Fonseca). What does this say about Brazilians and their attitude toward crime fiction and mysteries?

Crime pays in Brazil. Crime writing, by and large, does not. The genre isn’t popular at all. I’ve heard a number of explanations for this, but none that convince me. One argument is that Brazilians live with crime and violence every day of their lives. So much so, that they choose to live in denial of just how dangerous their large cities really are. They want to close their eyes to crime, and they don’t want to turn to it for diversion.

But if that’s true, why do the scripts of so many local television series rotate around murder and other crimes? Is it possible that people who buy books don’t watch those kinds of shows? Maybe, but I doubt it. Another explanation, often given, is that publishers are so leery of the genre that good crime writing simply can’t get into print. Maybe. What came first, the chicken or the egg? Does Brazil lack good crime writers, or does it lack publishers who are willing to publish good crime writers? The argument goes round and round, and its defenders claim the situation has historical antecedents. They say that a number of writers started trying to imitate the English and American greats of the 1930’s and failed miserably at it. And rather than ascribe the failure to lack of talent on the part of writers, the publishing industry erroneously interpreted it as a lack of interest in the genre.

But, if that’s so, how can one explain Rubem Fonseca, Patrica Melo, Marcello Rubens Paiva, Silvio Lancellotti, Rubens Costa, Augusto Boal, Ruy Castro, Dalton Trevisan and, yes, Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza? They’re all in print, all of them write the genre, and all of them manage to sell books. I question, however, if any of them (with the possible exceptions of Fonseca and Garcia-Roza) can live on the income thus generated.

Fonseca, although he was a cop at one time in his life, isn’t regarded as a crime writer. Garcia-Roza, although he’s an academic and has published other kinds of works, is. His Espinosa series has attracted more readers in the English-speaking world than it has here. Overall, Brazilians read much more non-fiction than fiction. And when it’s fiction, it’s likely to be one of the worldwide best-sellers (including works by the Brazilians Jorge Amado and Paulo Coelho) or one of the “serious” writers, like Clarice Lispector. (And, yes, Fonseca.)

Remember, too, that in this country lots of people can’t afford to buy books. Many are still illiterate. In a country of over one-hundred-eighty million people less than eight million daily newspapers are sold. In books, a best-seller is anything over five thousand copies.

(Read Part I of the interview with Leighton Gage here.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

(Satellite photo of Brazil: © 2008 Geology.com )

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Leighton Gage on crime and crime fiction in Brazil, Part I

Leighton Gage came to Brazil in 1973, left a few years later for Australia and the Middle East, but could not stay away.

When he came back two years later, he “ran smack dab into all of the bad things that I’d pushed into the back of my mind: the crime; the obscene wealth; the staggering poverty. I couldn’t take it. I went to live in Miami for a time. And found myself missing Brazil all over again. Now, a quarter of a century on, I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t have to live here all the time, but I do have to live here some of the time. I get homesick when I’m away for too long.”

Gage's first novel, Blood of the Wicked, published by Soho Crime, was one result of his exposure to the uglier side of the country. In Part I of a two-part interview, he talks to Detectives Beyond Borders about that book, its follow-up, and the vast, beautiful and violent land that inspired them.

(Read Part II of the interview with Leighton Gage here.)
===================================

Why is Brazil, northern Brazil in particular, a good setting for crime fiction?

Verisimilitude, for one thing: You can believe in cops who murder people because there are cops who murder people; you can believe in people that will kill you for your cell phone because there are people that will kill you for your cell phone; you can believe in the impunity of the rich, because it’s a fact that rich Brazilians seldom go to jail – no matter how grave their offense.

Add drug lords who operate with the support of government officials (and, not uncommonly, are government officials). Add Indians living in a vast rain forest who’ve never had contact with modern civilization. Add the eight- and nine-year-old girls, working in brothels before their breasts have bud. The list goes on and on. There are hundreds, thousands of stories to be told.

You mentioned the north. It’s a vast region that embraces several states and the Amazon rain forest as well. Salvador, in Bahia, was the capital long before Brasilia, long before Rio de Janeiro, and for a longer time than both of them put together. The countryside in northern Brazil has a character all its own. There’s a feudal aspect to it. Some of the great landlords still hold agricultural workers in virtual bondage. Those landlords have pet judges and politicians and hired gunmen to resort to in case the judges and politicians don’t see things their way. There are borders up there with five other countries. Arms smuggling and drug trafficking is rife. It’s like the Wild West.

Issues of land rights and police violence loom large in Blood of the Wicked. What single event or set of events made you say, “That’s it; I’m writing a novel.”? How did you then proceed to build a novel from that initial idea?

Blood of the Wicked was never meant to be a stand-alone. I didn’t just say to myself, “That’s it; I’m writing a novel.” I said, “Wow! All this s*** is happening, and hardly anyone outside of this country knows anything about it. What a great opportunity for a series. I’m sitting on a writer’s gold mine here!”

But I’m a big believer in character-driven fiction, so when I started laying the groundwork for the Silva novels, I started with my protagonist. He had to be a male. (A woman would wind up spending more of her time fighting sexism than fighting crime.) He had to be someone with enough rank to get things done. He had to have a mandate that would allow him to act anywhere in the country. He had to have a highly developed sense of morals. And he had to have a reason to fight crime and criminals that went beyond a simple vocation. I mixed them all together with the personas of two senior law-enforcement officials I know, and I came up with Mario Silva, a chief inspector of the Brazilian Federal Police.

Then I delved into the newspapers and started collecting material for stories. Blood of the Wicked deals with land reform. Buried Strangers, due for publication in January of 2009, deals with something entirely different, but if I tell you what it is, it would be a spoiler. Readers get halfway through the book before they discover why people are being murdered. One thing I can tell you, though: It’s not the sort of thing that could happen in downtown Los Angeles, or in the suburbs of New York, or anywhere else in America. But it sure as hell happens here.

Not all the crimes in Blood of the Wicked involve the landless and the landowners, yet the issue underlies everything, leading to false leads and wrong guesses. I’d like you to talk about this, if you would, preferably without too many plot spoilers.

Okay, but I can’t do it without giving you some statistics. Some people think Brazil is a poor country. It isn’t. Brazil is a rich country populated largely by poor people. The income distribution is only a little better than that of Bangladesh. A mere 1.6% of the population owns almost 50% of all of the arable land. The Brazilian Landless Workers' Movement (in the book I call them the Landless Workers' League), has set out to change all of that. They now number about 1.5 million, distributed across 23 of Brazil’s 27 states. Their principal technique is what they call the “peaceful occupation of untilled property.” Except that it isn’t always untilled, and it’s hardly ever peaceful. In the majority of cases, the cops and the local politicians have a vested interest in supporting the landowners. And the landowners often have a legally acquired title to the land that’s being trespassed upon. But not always. Sometimes those titles are faked. And sometimes people get forced off land that their families have tilled for generations. So what you’ve got here are the elements of a true tragedy: a case in which right and wrong is blurred on both sides.

Another important element in Blood of the Wicked is liberation theology, a doctrine now condemned by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, but one that a number of rural priests still covertly subscribe to. Some say that clergymen who practice liberation theology are Marxists. Liberation theologians say, “Wrong. Marxists deny the existence of God. We don’t. But the poor shouldn’t have to wait until after death for their reward. We want a radical re-distribution of wealth, and we want it now.”

They regard anyone who doesn’t agree with them, and that often includes their fellow priests, as defenders of an unjust status quo. Blood of the Wicked begins with the assassination of a bishop. Early suspicion falls on liberation theologians. But it could also have been a landowner. Or it might be someone else. But I can’t tell you more without running the risk of a spoiler.

You gave your protagonist, Mario Silva, and his nephew and assistant, Hector Costa, dramatic back stories. In Silva’s case, the background is especially shocking. Why did you make this choice? What does it add to the book?

Brazilians don’t believe in honest cops, and they particularly don’t believe in honest cops who have moved up in the hierarchy. And for good reason: Cops’ salaries in Brazil are a pittance. The opportunities for earning money on the side are great. And when your boss, and your boss’s boss, and all of your colleagues are on the take, the pressure to conform is enormous.

Mario 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.

But to do what they do, indeed to be able to perform at all within their environment, they need strong motivation, motivation that goes beyond vocational considerations. Hence the inclusion of their back stories.

(Read Part II of the interview with Leighton Gage here.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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Comic relief and tension-breakers: Two examples, and a question for readers

I've recently read two very different crime novels that used a similar device for comic effect. Andrea Camilleri's The Paper Moon and Blood of the Wicked, by Leighton Gage, punctuate their narratives with humorous, sometimes absurd confrontations (or avoidance thereof) between the protagonist and his superior officer.

Camilleri's running joke is a constantly postponed meeting between Inspector Salvo Montalbano and the commissioner he despises. In Gage's grim story about murder and the fight for land reform in northern Brazil, the one comic note is the phone calls between detective Mario Silva and his dim, pompous supervisor, or director, who insists on being updated on Silva's investigation "twice daily, at noon and at six."

Camilleri makes the reasons for the missed meeting grow wilder and more elaborate. Gage has the harried director grow more and more exasperated, enumerating his woes as the news gets worse, the bodies pile up, and the possible repercussions for his own career grow ever more worrisome. The phone calls, made comic by their regularity, begin to affect Silva even when they don't arrive. Each author repeats the joke but varies it just enough each time to keep the reader interested, something like a musical theme and successive variations.

Before I offer one example each from The Paper Moon and Blood of the Wicked, you get your chance to weigh in. What running jokes do crime novelists use to add humor or release tension? How do they hold the reader's interest when repeating a joke throughout a novel?
=========================================

"He said that 'cause they're having the furinal services for that sinator that died and seeing as how the c'mishner gotta be there poisonally in poisson, atta furinal. I mean, the c'mishner can't come to see youse like he said he was was gonna do. Unnastand, chief?"

"Perfectly, Cat."

– The Paper Moon

"Good evening, Director."

"Silva?"

It wasn't the director.

– Blood of the Wicked

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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