The Silence of the Rain (1996) O silèncio da chuva by Luis Alfredo Garcia-Roza
Good Reads meta-data is 256 pages, rated 3.68 by 913 litizens.
Genre: krimi.
DNA: Brazil.
Verdict: It is not about Espinosa.
Tagline: Variation on the locked room.
The introverted Inspector Espinosa inspects after a victim is found shot to death in locked car parked in a large, downtown garage. Is it robbery gone wrong, or something else staged to look like that? With patience, persistence, resilience, and the other virtues of literary detectives Espinosa traipses back and forth through Rio de Janeiro to find out, often taking the subway or a bus since parking, even for a marked police car, is nigh impossible.
We know something he doesn’t from the get-go and that deepens the mystery for readers because….
No honour among thieves but there were so many thieves I got lost. I never did fathom the original act, the widow, her would-be paramour, or the motivation of the villain, but it was a good trip all the same.
There is a strong sense of place with the tropical flora, coastal weather, enervating humidity, salvation air conditioning, criss-crossing Rio de Janeiro by night because it is too hot to do much in daylight.
It is not every detective who obsessively reads Charles Dickens in down time or keeps cautioning himself not to jump to conclusions. Though I thought he was let down sometimes by non-sequiturs in the translation, and a confusion among the characters.
Ricardo motivations? Unknown to me. Aurelio motivations? Unknown to me.
I have read 3 or 4 of this series which run to either 8 or 11 depending on which opinionator on Good Reads is cited. The author is a professor of philosophy at Rio University. Perhaps that explains why the detective is called eSpinoza.