Blood of the Wicked: A Chief Inspector Mario Silva Investigation by Leighton Gage

From the Publisher

"Blood of the Wicked manages to pack a huge amount into a spare three hundred pages; power politics, petty violence, sexual scandal, saintly courage, staggering poverty and obscene wealth. A book that makes you care about its large cast of characters, even when you know that they are going to die-frequently horribly. This is a novel as rich and complex as Brazil itself, with villains who make you want to spit, and heroes whose goodness is heartbreaking."-Rebecca Pawel, Edgar Award-winning author of Death of a Nationalist

In the remote Brazilian town of Cascatas do Pontal, where landless peasants are confronting the owners of vast estates, the bishop arrives by helicopter to consecrate a new church and is assassinated.

Mario Silva, chief inspector for criminal matters of the federal police of Brazil, is dispatched to the interior to find the killer. The pope himself has called Brazil's president; the pressure is on Silva to perform. Assisted by his nephew, Hector Costa, also a federal policeman, Silva must battle the state police and a corrupt judiciary as well as criminals who prey on street kids, the warring factions of the Landless League, the big landowners, and the church itself, in order to solve the initial murder and several brutal killings that follow. Justice is hard to come by. An old priest, a secret liberation theologist, finally metes it out. Here is a Brazil that tourists never encounter.

Leighton Gage is married to a Brazilian woman and spends part of each year in Santana do Parnaiba, Brazil, and the rest of the year in Florida and Belgium. This is his first novel.

Wilda Williams - Library Journal

Brazil. The name conjures up a seductive image of a bikini-clad girl dancing the samba along a Rio beach. But it is also a country with deep-rooted social and political problems, where less than one percent of the population owns half the arable land, where the wealthy live in gated, guarded luxury while the poor are crammed into squalid favelas, or shantytowns, and where corrupt local police enforce their own laws. Against this backdrop, Gage, who lived in Brazil for many years, sets his debut mystery, a gripping and brutal tale of murder and vengeance. When a sniper's bullet cuts down a bishop in an agricultural town in the state of São Paulo, Chief Inspector Mario Silva of the Brazilian Federal Police is ordered to investigate. Was the bishop, who disapproved of liberation theology, assassinated by a radical priest seeking to redistribute land to the poor, or was he killed by powerful landowners offended by his sermon condemning the recent gruesome murder of an activist and his family? The body count rises, as Silva and his team find their probe hampered by crooked cops, ambitious reporters, and missing witnesses. Sensitive readers, be warned: there are graphic scenes of horrific violence. But Gage's inspector is a fascinating character, a man who once dispensed his own brand of Brazilian justice now charged with upholding the law of the land. Highly recommended.

Kirkus Reviews

Multiple cross-currents complicate a high-profile Brazilian murder investigation. Cynical photographer Walter Abendthaler snaps countless photographs of bishop Dom Felipe, who's arrived by helicopter for a visit to the Brazilian agricultural town of Cascatas do Pontal. Faithful villagers and political protesters are both out in force when the bishop is killed by a covert assassin's high-powered rifle. The case falls to brooding Mario Silva, Chief Inspector for Criminal Matters, headquartered in the capital city of Sao Paulo. As the investigation moves forward, flashbacks fill in the grim past that formed Silva's worldview. While he was a college student in the '70s, his parents were hijacked by street thugs who raped his mother and killed his father. After deciding in an instant to enter law enforcement, Silva spent the next few years hunting down the men who destroyed his parents. He's raised eyebrows by making his laconic nephew his second in command. Their investigation casts a wide net as they explore internal conflicts of the clergy, clashes between the church and political factions and, courtesy of an elusive street urchin, the criminal underbelly of the region. As Silva also trades barbs with jaded newspaper editor Diana Poli, Gage creates a contemporary tapestry of Brazil by detailing the backstories of Diana and several others. Gage's debut builds a compelling foundation for future Silva cases.

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