Blood of the Wicked [Hardcover]

Leighton Gage (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2008

clever dialogue, a twisting plot and an...engaging, fast-paced story that is hard to put away for the night - Minneapolis Star Tribune

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

At the start of Gage's bloody debut, Chief Insp. Mario Silva is asked by his boss, the director of the Brazilian Federal Police, to solve the murder of Bishop Dom Felipe Antunes, who was assassinated at a church consecration in the remote Brazilian town of Cascatas. However, tensions between landowners and the Landless Workers' League embroil Silva in local politics when he must put equal resources into solving the disappearance of a local landowner's son, Orlando Muniz Junior. Priestly pedophilia, kidnappings and more murders punctuate the escalation of the conflict between landowners and reformers, while Silva also grapples with his personal demons, having tracked down and killed both his father's and brother-in-law's murderers. By the end of this brutal novel, it's hard to care who killed whom. It's also a miracle that Silva, who seems increasingly ineffectual, survives the mayhem. This ultraviolent mystery is not for the faint of heart. (Jan.)
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Review

"Irresistible" - The New York Times

South America's Kurt Wallander - Booklist

Masterful 
--Toronto Globe and Mail

Compelling

--The Boston Globe

Fascinating, complex and riveting 
--Florida Sun Sentinel

 Praise for Leighton Gage's Mario Silva series:
 
"Top notch ... controversial and entirely absorbing."—The New York Times Book Review
 
"A dark, violent book with characters that seethe on the page ... compelling writing. Readers will smell the steam and stench of the Amazon and recoil from the torture and depredation from which Gage averts his lens, barely in
time."—Boston Globe
 

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Soho Crime; First Edition edition (January 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569474702
• ISBN-13: 978-1569474709
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 1.1 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,341,538 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Leighton Gage writes the Chief Inspector Mario Silva series, crime novels set in Brazil. His work has been praised by the New York Times, Booklist, Library Journal, Kirkus and a variety of other publications as well as by numerous online reviewers. You can visit him on the web at http://www.leightongage.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, September 21, 2008

By 

Miran Ali "I don't like anonymous reviewers" (Dhaka, Bangladesh) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blood of the Wicked (Hardcover)

It is very rare indeed when I feel the Amazon peer review system has guided me to a book I don't enjoy as much as the other reviewers. This unfortunately is one of them.
First off, it isn't a mystery. You'll know who the villain is just a few pages in. Second, the background of Silva, the federal policemen investigating the crimes, was overly melodramatic and contrived. Indeed the whole book is melodramatic and predictable. The only surprise is the continued brutality, which admittedly may be a part of Brazilian land disputes, but here only helps in tallying up the number of innocent victims. The overall tone is preachy and in only a couple of instances admits that the solutions to Brazil's land problems lie in some sort of compromise. The rest of the book is full of brave landless peasants fighting against evil landowners and corrupt cops with only the help from their friends, the equally brave Vatican defying Liberation Theology spouting priests (there are evil priests here too). I don't want to ascribe any politics to Leighton Gage, since I don't know much about him, but if the next book also has an overtly social reformist tone it'll be a disappointment as well.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fascinating but violent Brazilian police procedural, December 31, 2007

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blood of the Wicked (Hardcover)

In a classic sh*t rolls down hill, the Pope calls the Brazilian president twice; in turn the president pressures the Director of the Brazilian Federal Police Nelson Sampaio to resolve the matter ASAP; in turn Nelson orders Chief Inspector Mario Silva to uncover the identity of the person who assassinated Bishop Dom Felipe Antunes at a church mass in front of a crowd at Cascatas. Mario understands he is to drop everything else and personally handle the investigation in the remote town and capture the felon yesterday.

Silva travels immediately to Cascatas only to find angry townsfolk as the affluent landowners and the reform minded Landless Workers' League are in a brawl over sharing the wealth. Each side's leaders demand Silva investigates a local case that has raised tensions to a point that hostilities seem imminent if he wants any cooperation on the Bishop homicide. The son of a local landowner, Orlando Muniz Junior vanished without a trace. His father and his allies believe the league abducted and probably killed him. The League believes the lad is on holiday.

Silva is a fascinating character as he has enough personal issues and a difficult case without getting involved in the local tsunami, but cannot keep out of it as more kidnappings and murders occur. He makes little progress on either investigation and what he does learn like the church is involved in protecting its own when pedophile accusations surface make him wonder if the Bishop's death is related. Although extremely violent as the title is not false advertising, fans who have a strong stomach for gore will enjoy this Brazilian police procedural.

Harriet Klausner

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Suspenseful story of frontier justice south of the equator, January 12, 2008

By 

Duncan H. Haynes (Miami, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blood of the Wicked (Hardcover)

In a carefully crafted mystery-thriller debut Blood of the Wicked, Leighton Gage reveals a little- seen side of Brazil. This is not a beach book of tanned and toned bodies moving to a languid bossa nova rhythm along the sandy shores of Rio de Janeiro. Nor is it an Amazon adventure. This story takes place in the pantal of the southeastern region. It is a gristly tale of greed, torture, murder, and of personal and institutional corruption in a country where one percent of the population owns half of the arable land, and where much of the peasantry is condemned to a life of involuntary servitude.

The story reveals the region to be a breeding ground for strife and Gage loses no time throwing us into the fray. Enter Dom Filipe Antunes, Bishop of Preidente Vargas, descending by helicopter on the town of Cascatas do Pantal to bestow blessings on the new church of Nossa Senhora dos Milagres. The bishop is greeted by a ring of townspeople, a crescent of banners of the Landless Worker's League and a posting of State Police. The delegation of local officials approaches at an annoyingly slow pace and a bullet from a high-powered rifle finds the bishop's heart as he stands alone.

Who did it? Was it landless workers upset that Christianity was not being practiced on its most fundamental level? Or was it wealthy landowners looking for another excuse to persecute the land-reform agitators?

Enter the institutions. The Vatican is upset. Powers in Brasilia demand a politically balanced solution. The job falls on the shoulders of protagonist Mario Silva, Chief Inspector for Criminal Matters of the Federal Police of Brazil.

Mario Silva knows a lot about criminal activity in Brazil -- urban variety, anyway. In the book's early pages we learn how his father was murdered by robber after making a fatal mistake -- stopping for a red light. We also learn how Mario Silva found the robber and exacted justice, urban Brazilian style. Subjects of Silva's investigation included pawn brokers, street kids, hoodlems and policemen who supplement their income by shaking them down. Silva's action did not involve arresting his father's murderer and bringing him to trial. However, distinctive feature's of the robber's tatoo and the uniqueness of the stolen object made Silva absolutely certain that he had gotten and dispatched the right man.

Investigating the murder of the Bishop in provincial city of Cascatas do Pantal, Silva is not able to take such decisive action. He is hamstrung by bureaucracy, blocked by the uncooperative Colonel of the State Police, and is hampered by people's fear to speak. As Silva investigates systematically we learn many interesting facts the way. We learn about the "Theology of Liberation" which was once advocated by rural priests and has now found the disfavor of the Church hierarchy. We learn of the vast fazendas (rhymes with haciendas), some as large as Connecticut. We learn that the constitutional allows for seizure and purchase of unused portions of these large holdings by populist movements. We also learn that the legal process is complicated and that the judges are for sale.

In Blood of the Wicked, Lieghton Gage serves up a strong brew of horror story, police procedural, slasher novel and whodunit. It would defy classification were it not a true and never- ending story. It is the story of a land war and frontier justice, south of the equator. A landowner has his overseer nail a protesting peasant to a tree. A group of hooded vigilantes rousts the landowner from bed, butchers his overseer in front of his eyes, then carts the landowner off to be buried alive at the top of a hill. We learn that the commandant State Police is not just a bureaucratic short-timer, but is one of the bad guys. The priests, we learn, come in several flavors besides Jesuit and Franciscan. Escalating violence gets way ahead of Chief Inspector Silva's procedural investigation of the initial crime. The struggle becomes a combination of range war and Mafia turf fight with many players lending a hand. When the dust settles, justice is served, but mainly because Silva the only honest man left standing and because national TV cameras are poised to broadcast the story.

The "ripped from the headlines" quality of Blood of the Wicked is the result of the author's wide experience with the Brazil, which includes marriage and frequent visits to the country.