The comments in this review relate more directly to the original in Portuguese, which is entitled "Perseguido". It could have been a great book, but it's a major flop. The book is divided into three "stories", which really are subdivisions of one same plot. The first one is fantastic. It sets up the story of Jonas, or Isidoro, a man who shows up at a psychiatric clinic in Rio de Janeiro. There is seen by Dr. Artur Nesse, who seems much more troubled than his patient. In their first meeting, a "preliminary" session, the doctor builds the patient's case around the fact that while his legal name is Isidoro, he wants to be called Jonas. In the two following sessions, rather than trying to allow the patient to state the reason that drove him to seek medical help, the doctor insists on the identity issue. Little by little this strange pattern develops into something scary. The doctor starts feeling that the patient is trying to invade his life for some dark motive. Jonas/Isidoro starts out as a very mysterious character, the one who sparks the reader's excitement for the whole story.
In the second "story", Espinosa, the police chief investigator who headlines a series of Garcia-Roza's books, is brought by Dr. Nesse into the plot. The plot develops well enough along this story, but it is brought to an aggravating and disappointing sort of conclusion in the third story. It looks as if the author simply couldn't conceive of a good way to wrap up the book and just allowed it to come to an end where nothing is explained and where nothing seems to make much sense. The conclusion is heavy handed and is bound to anger the most generous reader. I recommend you avoid this book at all costs.
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