The Silence of The Rain, by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

One amazing murder mystery. I read in the original Portuguese "O Silencio da Chuva" and loved every bit of it. The one bit that disappointed me was that it didn't succeed as a "whodunit" it for me: I felt that the clues were a bit too revealing, which didn't leave me with a surprise at the end. Well, although there was no surprise as to "who did it", there were other elements in the end that made satisfying and surprising. This would be fantastic material for a film-noir screenplay and I hope someone will jump to turn into a good movie someday.

The story starts out with a suicide; the event is used to start the thread and to set up the stage for the main act. When the police arrives at the crime scene, there is no obvious indication that it was not a murder and an investigation begins. The main character is this detective with a passion for books, a character that is built up slowly until the reader develops enough empathy to feel right in his shoes, going through the motions the writer constructed for him.

Familiarity with the city of Rio de Janeiro surely helps one construct a mental image of the settings for this story. As a Carioca expatriate, I could picture every street corner, almost smell the fumes from the buses in the busy streets, almost taste the ripe mangoes from someone's backyard. I can't speak for what kind of experience someone not as familiar with Rio would have with this read, but I imagine it would be an interesting trip to one of the most intriguing, fun places on earth.