Customer Reviews

Dying Gasp: A Chief Inspector Mario Silva Investigation

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Leighton Gage has done it again.

DYING GASP is another brilliantly written book about horrific crimes and police official corruption that plague real life in Brazil.

Aside from the masterful storytelling, the character of Mario Silva is what makes this a most outstanding police procedural series and outshines the best writers we have today.

As a big fan of Henning Mankell I can say Leighton Gage is in the same league or better.

The story opens with Silva updating his boss on a prisoner being held in a cell where he's being raped at least six times a day. His boss is shocked, and tells Silva he's gone much too far this time.

Silva explains that this prisoner is no better than the others, the only difference, they prey on grown men while this prisoner preys on children.

I've never read a book with a protagonist as original and ruthless as Silva.

Before the book opens there is a quote from Job 11:20 (New International Version)
"...escape will elude them; their hope will become a dying gasp."

I'm not sure if the quote applies to those who cross Silva's path or victims who have been horribly violated.

This is a gripping, fast paced, can't put it down read.

Leighton Gage is as good a police procedural writer as you'll find out there today. Set in Brazil, his Chief Inspector Mario Silva books, so far, do not disappoint. In this offering Gage tackles two particularly gruesome and loathesome subjects -- child prostitution and snuff films -- the latter of which he declines to treat as an urban legend, with some basis in fact. Whereas Gage's characters are fairly well drawn, they are not subtle. The bad guys are real bad -- the good guys, angels. But Silva is a good character who, like most fictional cops, are harassed by their bosses and the public, only to emerge victorius in the end. This is a fast-paced, enjoyable thriller by a talented author.

Set in Brazil, Leighton Gage the Author has weaved a mystery and crime novel that pushes so many other big Author names aside within this genre. The story is packed with everything you want a Crime novel to be and more. I was mesmerized from Page 1 and was swept off of my back and feet. I applaud Leighton Gage for his ability to write something fresh. A thrill a minute. This would make an awesome script and then movie for sure. Procure this book everyone.

By now we know the formula. Mario Silva is the head of Brazil's Federal Police, similar to our FBI. He has a small staff (including his nephew, who is very sensitive to charges of nepotism) and a political animal for a boss, a guy who spends most of his time trying to figure out how he can use Silva and his colleagues to get himself ahead politically. Usually something comes up, and Silva is assigned to deal with it.

So in the current installment, Silva's confronted with two things. First, his boss wants him to find the missing granddaughter of a powerful politician. The girl has run off, which isn't that bad except that she's a lesbian, and the politician's very conservative and religious. If she's found with her girlfriend, the result could be a political scandal that could damage his career...so he wants her found, quietly and quickly.

Meanwhile, a terrorist bomb goes off in Holland, and among other things it blows up a mail truck. Among the damaged pieces of mail, the police find a stack of letters addressed to different people, containing DVDs that have on them a snuff video, where a man has sex with a woman, and then kills her, in this case decapitating her. There are internal things about the video that imply it came from Brazil, and since Hector (Mario's nephew) is there at a conference on international policing, he confers with the Dutch authorities, and then returns home to help in the investigation to discover the person who made these horrific videos.

I really enjoyed this book. The author does have a habit of writing an anti-climactic ending, but the police procedural aspect of the book is quite interesting, and the characters are growing on me more with each volume. Recommended.

Clear your schedule when you curl up to read DYING GASP. It's hard to put down. I couldn't do it.

Mario Silva, Chief Inspector for the federal police in Brazil, has just been given a job that's not in his job description: find Marta Malan, the feisty, fifteen-year-old runaway granddaughter of a powerful Deputado. Silva's boss is trading political favors again.

The trail leads Silva and his reluctant team to the Amazon. In the steamy jungle town of Manaus, good cops are not welcome. Democracy is a joke, power is in the hands of old feudal families, the police protect the crooks, bodies are easily disposed of - and sex tourism is thriving.

There are indications that Marta may be hidden in this hellhole. Bad news, if true. Certain local brothels specialize in illegal underage girls and clandestine auctions for virgins. Worst of all, it looks like someone in town is making snuff films.

DYING GASP is a shocking saga of corruption and hypocrisy. The cast of compelling characters includes evil-doers, do-gooders and do-nothings - as well as a frightening villain from Leighton Gage's previous book. Readers who encountered this murderous surgeon in BURIED STRANGERS won't want to miss her ominous reappearance.

This is the third Mario Silva novel, and the books just keep getting better. As always, the wise-cracking dialog helps alleviate the tension of deeply disturbing subjects.

I confess to being a serial Gage reader. He's a writer very much on his game who selects themes for his novels that are contemporary issues of the day. An example is Dying Gasp an artful blend of dialogue and narrative dealing with the real issue of human trafficking of children for the sex trade. The story line, the kidnapping of the daughter of a powerful Brazilian, pulses like a distant drumbeat leading one through a complex maze of events, and introduces the reader to the steady hand and mind of Chief Inspector Mario Silva, as well as a lively cast of characters who spring to life through believable dialogue and just the right amount of narrative. Do yourself a favor and place this book at the head of your "bucket list".

Dying Gasp is the third of Gage's fantastic series of crime novels starring Chief Inspector Mario Silva of the Brazilian Federal Police. Each story provides a fantastic murder mystery, but what separates this series from other crime novels is the setting. The casual reader who only knows Brazil for soccer and Carnaval will be exposed to a much different side of the South American nation. Gage paints a brutally honest and fascinating picture of Brazilian society and the inherent justices therein. I would recommend this to any fan of murder mysteries as well as anyone who wants to gain a better understanding of Brazilian society.

This is the third book in the series, a captivating look at the child-prostitution trafficking in Brazil. The author was kind enough to offer me both this book and the second one and I am very thankful. I truly enjoyed it.
The writing was as concise as the first one, but the story was even more thought out, the complex plot lines merging and weaving together in an almost seamless fashion. It was fast paced without being manic, and I for one, never found myself bored or confused.
The characters are the best part of these two books. The main character Mario Silva, is a quirky mix of charisma, sarcasm and intelligence, and the supporting detectives, or agents, provide plenty of comic relief in a book that could easily have become too depressing for the common reader. The villain, whose identity I will not reveal because I don't want to ruin it for anyone, is fantastic. I highly enjoyed following her/his (if I say the genre, it's too easy) depraved plots.
What I enjoy most in these books is the clarity in the writing. There is no attempt to fool the reader, only to tell a story well. That to me, is refreshing.

First Line: The bomb aboard the number nine tram claimed seventeen lives.

Normally a missing teenage girl doesn't raise many eyebrows, but when she's the granddaughter of a prominent politician, Chief Inspector Mario Silva's ambitious boss is practically jumping through hoops to earn Brownie points and keep the man happy.

The girl's disappearance is tied to kidnapping and the extremely lucrative international trade in underage girls, prostitution, and snuff films. Her trail leads Silva and his men to Manaus, deep in the Amazon basin in one of Brazil's poorest provinces. While the teenager fights against her fate, Silva and his team tries to find her before it's too late.

I am a mystery series junkie; I have no clue how many mystery series I follow, and the number would probably shock me. One thing I do know is that, since I began reading the Chief Inspector Mario Silva series, it has become one of my top ten favorites.

Gage's novels have introduced me to a part of the world about which I was ignorant, knowing more about its early history than what is going on there now. A strong sense of place is always present in my favorite series. Few writers capture this as well as Leighton Gage.

I am also a character-driven reader, and characters abound in these books, from Silva's bumbling boss, to Silva's crack team of investigators (especially Arnaldo whom I depend upon for much needed comic relief), to Silva himself-- a man who has no illusions about the corrupt system in which he works.

A strong point in Dying Gasp for me was the missing girl, Marta Malan. At first glance, she's a typical rich girl who believes she's just that much better than everyone else, but as she fights her captors in order to stay alive, my contempt for her underwent a sea change.

One of the characters from Buried Strangers appears in this third book in the series. An evil person with absolutely no concept of right or wrong, this character made my skin crawl, and her death seemed strangely anti-climactic in Dying Gasp. However, it did serve as a vivid contrast to young Marta's struggles.

I am going to be very sad when I've caught up with this series. What a drag, waiting for each new one to be published!

When the fifteen-year-old granddaughter of one of the most important and influential men in Recife, and indeed in all of Brazil, goes missing, the case lands on the desk of Chief Inspector Mario Silva, who makes his third appearance in this latest in the series. [The politician's office is described as "decorated partly in nineteenth-century French colonial and partly in twenty-first-century Brazilian egomaniac."] As the Brazilian Federal Police is apparently "a smaller organization than the police departments of many major cities," Silva is forced to call upon the local police. This would seem to be a good thing, until one realizes how thoroughly corrupt are those so-called officers of the law.

The early action in the book takes place in Amsterdam, before settling in Brasilia, the Brazilian capital, and Manaus, deep in Amazon country. The description of the latter city in these pages will not raise any tourism interest, depicted as it is as a place rife with corruption and crime to incredible degrees. Silva's investigation is hampered on all sides: When outright bribery is not the motivating force, it is political expediency.

In this novel the author delves a bit more into the back-story of Inspector Silva. As well, he brings back Claudia Andrade, the hugely sadistic woman who readers met in "Buried Strangers," the second novel in the series. This book is darker and more violent than the prior entry, dealing as it does with the exploitation of under-age girls, some as young as 10, sold into prostitution and worse, much worse. The suspense steadily builds towards a page-turning denouement, and the fast pace, tight plotting and well-drawn characters all make it a book which is highly recommended.