GoodReads meta-data is 256 pages, rated 3.71 by 190 litizens.
Genre: krimi.
Verdict: deliberate but obscure.
When an unidentified, crippled homeless man is shot dead in what looks like a professional murder, putting Inspector Espinosa back on the mean streets of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) in the rain. Why would anyone go to the bother of killing with such efficiency a helpless and hopeless man? Why did the victim hobble up the steep cobblestoned hill in a thunderstorm to the place of his death?
Then there are the guests at a nearby dinner party who parked cars on the street where the murder occurred. Did the dinners see or hear anything in the deluge? No, but one of them seems evasive, or is he just vague? Espinosa has many questions and sets about getting answers.
A police procedural follows. There is much back-and-forth in Ipanema and Copacabana as Espinosa and his team question, trace, and question again. And that part I liked as they pieced together the puzzle.
But the momentum is interrupted by unnecessary backstories of nearly everyone and anyone along the way. Nor did I like the denouement which seemed to me to undermine most of what went before. I had the same reactions to the two earlier titles in this series: the locale is fine, and Espinosa plods away but the plot is – well, really it is not a plot at all. There is no way a reader can follow it.
Spoilers alert, take warning!
- The efficient killing was not efficient.
- Nearly all the testimony so painstakingly pieced together is irrelevant.
- The narrator is untrustworthy.
- Did the wife know about the gun or not? Sometimes yes, and sometimes no.
- The last character introduced is the one. (A rule violation of the procedural.)
- The catalyst was a psycho like a storm and not integral.
The list could go on.