The third installment of Leighton Gage's acclaimed series finds Chief Inspector Mario Silva of the Federal Police in Brasilia summoned by a high-ranking politician. "Deputado Malan's inner office was decorated partly in nineteenth-century French colonial and partly in twenty-first-century Brazilian egomaniac," writes Gage before he goes on to reveal the piece of business that Malan wants done--and quickly. His teenaged granddaughter, Marta, has disappeared and he has reason to believe she may have fallen into the hands of a ring of sex-traffickers specializing in underage trade.
All roads and waterways lead to Manaus, a thousand miles up the Amazon River in the middle of the impenetrable rain forest. Once in Manaus, Chief Inspector Silva and his federal police cohorts receive the kind of help from local Manaus police that can be summarized simply as uncooperative, obstructionist and murderous. The federal police would expect nothing less from a group of bribe-driven thugs about whom they say, "The cops are worse than the town itself." Silva's own low opinion of Manaus, expressed in the vivid lingo of a cop who has seen everything nasty at least twice, will not induce travelers who stumble on this compulsively readable procedural thriller to visit.
At the center of the web of underage prostitution, sex tourism and snuff video production into which Silva's men wade in search of Malan's granddaughter stands Claudia Andrade. Make no mistake, Claudia is happy to be there. Pure evil, she saw her life's work laid out for her at an early age when she realized "she was going to preside over deaths." Hot on Claudia's trail, along with the federal police, is a Jesuit priest. "Father Vitorio is confident of God's protection. It's a question of faith," a young informant tells Silva. The good Father's faith proves fatal when it comes up against Claudia's rapacious career drive.
Silva and his men, however, have methods more appropriate to this fight than faith, and they are just as ruthless in applying them as Claudia and killer pimps are. "Arnaldo's response involved his right foot and elicited a howl of pain from the punk," Gage writes of one step in the right direction as Evil Armed Might meets civil servants who must prevail. After all, when Silva's workday ends in the wilds of the Amazon, he has to answer to politicians as corrupt, amoral and sleazy as any producers of snuff videos.--John McFarland
Shelf Talker: A police procedural featuring nonstop action, exotic locales, unparalleled lowlifes and a set of witty and wily raconteurs fighting on the side of good.