Customer Reviews

The Silence of the Rain: A Novel

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Popular Brazilian author Garcia-Roza wrote a trilogy of crime novels in the latter part of the '90s, and this is the first of them to appear in English. Unlike another Brazilian crime novel of that time, Patricia Melo's "The Killer", this book doesn't take a hard-boiled approach, but is a carefully crafted procedural. With plenty of social commentary mixed in, the book reads somewhat like one of Mario Vargas Llosa's crime fictions such as "Who Killed Palamino Molero" or "The Green House".

The novel starts by presenting the suicide of a rich executive in Rio de Janerio, and in Hitchcockian fashion allows the reader to know a great deal more than the hero for most of the book. That hero is a rather nebbish Detective Inspector, who for most of the book treats the case as a murder since someone made off with the gun used in the suicide, the note, and more. As in much noir, several smalltime people get accidentally mixed up in the matter and further deaths ensue, making it all rather confusing for the Inspector. He's a likable loner, a kindred spirit of John Harvey's Nottingham Inspector Charlie Resnick, or Sicilian Inspector Montalbano of Andrea Camilleri's series ("The Shape of Water").

There are some rather curious aspects to the story, for example, despite Rio's notorious murder rate, this homicide Detective mostly adheres to strict 9-5, Monday-Friday hours, working only a single case at a time. And in the book's sole instance of awkward author contrivance, his network of informers just happens to have information on a key gun sale-this in a city where guns change hands like pocket change. The setting is fairly interesting, rain-slicked white middle-class Rio neighborhoods which are very cosmopolitan and European (I'm not sure why other reviewers insist on using the word "sultry" to describe the setting). Rio's favelas (shantytowns) are only seen in the distance.

It's always a treat to read crime fiction from other countries, and this is no exception. Garcia-Roza's trilogy kicks off with an intriguing plot, a likable hero, and great promise.

I truly enjoyed this book. It is fast paced, it is exotic in location and it has an intelligent cop. But even more astounding it only has smart women characters. There is not a single blond bimbo, prostitute or a lowlife female character, of dubious virtues. ALL of the women have professions, know what they want, and SURPRISE! they think! Not one needs the protection of our tough cop! This is so refreshing! It makes me want to read more of Espinosa. The book is a standard mystery. There is no need to try to find here the answer to your philosophical questions. Look for other styles for that. But it is a truly enjoyable one afternoon or two, depending on your time book, an uncompromising weekend read!

Initially, I was intrigued by the poetic title of this novel by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza: "The Silence of the Rain."
It began quite promisingly, but by the second "book",things had already begun to slow down. The switching from third person to first person narrative and back seemed more a whim than a solid structural device, and I found it baffling. (Who IS telling this story?) Also, while I like cerebral detectives, Espinosa, once he begins talking, even if it's only to himself, never shuts up, and his conjectural scenarios and other ramblings slow the plot. Worse, he doesn't really solve anything. And still worse: if we are ever given the hint of believeable motive for any of the deeds committed, this reader missed it. Because the characters never became "real," their actions didn't make sense. There were simply too many "whys" left unanswered. Because if you don't have character development in a mystery, you don't have answers.
As for the ending--it accomplished nothing except to make the entire story seem like a bad joke--the author having one off on the reader. In that respect, the "poetic" title was also a cheat.

This mystery, in which Espinosa slogs his way through what seems to be a murder and turns out to be a suicide, is a refreshing change from the usual "kick 'em in the belly" type of tough-guy thriller. Espinosa is a loner and a philosopher who loves books and is generally misunderstood by his colleagues. He has a talent for encountering numerous lowlifes, some on the fringes of society. These characters and the contradictions in various clues make a good story, but what I liked best was the little turns of phrase that the author uses to describe the action and characters. He is reminiscent of Raymond Chandler in this respect, and, also like Chandler, evokes a time and place. We look forward to others by this author.

Inspector Espinosa has a strange case on his hands. An executive, found dead in his car, is the victim of an apparent murder and possibly a robbery since victim's briefcase and wallet are missing. The other possibility is an insurance scam. Three women are involved and Espinosa takes a personal interest in two of them; the wealthy widow and the victim's girlfriend. As more people die, Espinosa is determined to unravel the threads of this complicated case.

I'll admit having had a problem getting into this. It was interesting, but I just didn't feel that involved in the story. Then, about a third of the way through, the author changes POV from third to first person and I was captivated. Because I read for character, it took that change for me to see the appeal of Espinosa and really care what happened to the characters and the case. When the author switches back to third person toward the end, I was so involved in the story, it didn't matter. I understood why Garcia-Ruiz wrote the book as he did, and I am very glad I stayed with it. For me, the strength of the book was that the book was set somewhere unfamiliar to me. But the weakness was that, in spite of the author's best efforts, I did identify the killer fairly early and I really hated the ending.

i would have given this book three stars but it's hard to believe the author or editors would allow the book to end the way it does. It's especially annoying becuase the author spends the last 75 pages getting the reader ready for a climactic ending but instead, he apparently couldn't come up with anything even remotely interesting and chooses an easy and stupid way out. anyone with any appreciation of gender issues will be annoyed or worse at the stupid end of this book. additionally, the tone of the whole novel is somewhat slow and detached, like the main character.

I just finished the first book of the Inspector Espinosa series - there is now four books in the collection. (Note: the second book in the series is now called "December Heat" instead of the original "Lost and Found".)

The story takes place in Rio de Janeiro and gives a vivid portrait of the city, architecture, food and culture. Inspector Espinosa is a wonderful, philisophical character who likes to browse used book stores. We see him at home several times, trying to arrange his massive collection of books (How many of us can relate to that!!). "He spent the rest of the afternoon dealing with his books at home or at least trying to make it look as if he'd tried. After an hour, he realized he was just shifting piles. Rearranging the chaos."

Anyhow, the mystery is compelling and interesting - especially with the occasional musings of Inspector Espinosa - who contemplates the single life, other peoples lives, and how a murder could have happened.

I highly recommend this book - and also a must read if you are on a plane to Rio!

I really wanted to like this book --it starts out very promising --and I thought maybe I have anothe Henning Mankell type series to work my way through --but alas, and as some of the other reviewers indicated, this book is quite flawed (my number #1 question is why no one has a cell phone to advance the plot and the many situations calling for communciations between Espinosa and the other characters ) but there are so many flaws in the plot and it does become fairly obvious at one point as to who the culprit is ...but there is a kind of an awkward, slightly askew rhythm to the story that kept me from putting it down ( I guess I just like detective stories/police procedurals that take place on foreign soil.

Luis Alfredo Garcia-Roza's Brazilian police detective, Inspector Espinosa, is more likely to haunt a bookstore than to haunt the shadows and alleyways of Rio. He's no winner with the ladies and his fellow cops ignore him. And given that he believes an obvious suicide is murder (passing on routine forensics), he's also as sharp as a sack of ratos molhados.

The "Silence of the Rain" was a huge hit when it came out in Brazil. And why not? The author is well known in his native land and he populates his novel with all the classic detective elements: Sex, death, fear, and the mystery of a businessman shot in the head, the tortured body of the businessman's secretary's mother, the missing secretary, and a lowlife who happened to stumble into a money deal bigger than he realized. There's the deceased's sensuous wife, her potential suitor, the suitor's aerobic instructor girlfriend, and the dead man's business partner--all tangled up and knotty to sort out. None of it makes any sense to Espinosa.

Unfortunately, none of it makes much sense to us readers, either. This is an oddly written mystery novel. It starts and ends with an omniscient narrator, but in the middle it switches to Espinosa's first person point of view. Switching POV is necessary here since Garcia-Roza gives us almost no character detail for his protagonist in the first part of the book. This leaves readers with no one to care about--a major error. Switching back to omniscient later seems like an out, as if the author could not fill in the rest of the story through Espinosa's eyes.

Even given the POV issues, the story starts promisingly with a detailed look at the suicide of the businessman, so we know--a la "Columbo"--what Espinosa does not. Fair enough. Yet these elements only work well if the ultimate villain in the story is not telegraphed. Here, Garcia-Roza shows his hand so blatantly that the only suspense left is how the villain is dispatched. And I'll go on record as saying that the demise is as laughable as it is sorry. There is nothing worse than a writer bailing on the ending, except perhaps switching the POV, throwing the villain in our laps, and THEN bailing on the ending.

Considering the acclaim for "The Silence of the Rain," the first in the Espinosa series to reach our shores, I had high hopes. Sadly, this novel does not make me want to delve more into the affairs of the bookish detective.

This book is dreadful. I bought it because I'm a fan of detectives from around the world. But Garcia-Roza switches from third-person, to first person, and back again. Why does he do it? Because he couldn't figure out how to plot the book around Inspector Espinoza's own discoveries. That's because during the entire book, the detective doesn't really find anything out at all. It all gets wrapped up through no fault of his own... The worse part, however, is the scene where a beautiful young woman finds herself handcuffed to a bed with a bad guy and decides that the only way to get out of her tricky situation is to have sex with the villain until the excitement kills him. Which it does. But not until the beautiful girl has really enjoyed the sex, though she hates herself for it. Maybe that could happen in Rio, after all it's the land of the string bikini, but I doubt it very much. Absolute nonsense.