Peculiar. Very, very peculiar.
Mystery novels featuring a detective nearly always begin with a murder. The detective is called to the scene of the crime and the tale takes off from there.
With Southwesterly Wind, things are quite different. On the first pages, a thirty-year-old man by the name of Gabriel meets with Inspector Espinosa to impart what he considers a shattering piece of information: he was told by a psychic at his birthday party that before his next birthday he would commit murder. He has two months to go and he's frantic. He tells Espinosa he desperately needs his help.
Not long thereafter, two brutal murders are committed. The victims have a direct connection with Gabriel, but Espinosa knows it is highly unlikely this passive, eccentric young man is responsible.
Several chapters in, we have a good idea who's the murderer. We as readers know more than Espinosa and the police and others in the tale since Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza shifts the narrative back and forth between characters, which is quite different than the usual detective yarn. I can appreciate literary critic Maureen Corrigan's observation, “One of the pleasures of reading Garcia-Roza derives from watching how he thwarts our narrative experiences. Throughout Soutwesterly Wind, he shuffles and reshuffles a limited deck of secondary characters to assemble startling patters.”
Yet again another joy in reading a Garcia-Rosa novel: we're provided with many colorful details of Rio de Janeiro's streets and beaches, hotels and apartments, restaurants and cafés, along with the women, men, and children who live in this unique city. “The beachfront streets in the Zona Sul were being battered by a strong soutwesterly wind. It had stirred up the sea and filled the sky with ragged clouds. The physical changes were remarkable, but there was another transformation in the spirit of the city's inhabitants, especially palpable in the beachside neighborhoods. The southwester was a harbinger of change.”
Likewise with the author's sociological observations revolving around Rio. “Robberies and murders were on the rise, but they weren't the main focus of police work. In a country marked by huge income disparities, the only real job of the police was to keep the Third World from invading the First.”
Additionally, the Brazilian author's vividly and sharply drawn characters add depth to the novel, especially since the focus is more on the interplay of individual personalities than on police procedures. Among others, we come to know Gabriel, Hidalgo the psychic, and two exceptionally attractive professional women—Olga and Irene.
"Irene glided smoothly along, head held high, sure that people would get out of her way." You bet people got out of her way. After all, Irene is an elegant Latina who would turn any man's head. And since Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza has much in common with his fellow countryman Rubem Fonseca, an author who doesn't shy away from sensuality and sexuality in his fiction, we shouldn't be surprised Espinosa eventually is treated to several rounds of luscious sex with luscious Irene as the first step in developing a more lasting relationship. Ah, this infusion of passion is in marked contrast to many thrillers where the detective tends to be puritanical, written by such as Jo Nesbø, Tana French, Arnaldur Indridason, and Henning Mankell.
Espinosa is a bookish man, a love for books instilled in him by his grandmother, who came to raise him at age ten after his parents died in an automobile crash. He loves to roam through Rio's bookshops, particularly used ones, and he has amassed hundreds of books, stored floor to ceiling in the apartment he inherited from his parents.
I've gone light, very light on plot. Much better for a reader to discover the psychology of the characters and the development of events while turning the pages. I'll conclude with Gabriel reflecting, "One's fellow man was not one's brother, as the Christians would have it. Man was the enemy. He felt like a lone wolf, walking with his eyes to the ground, his body hunched over, his shoulders rounded. He was threatened from every side, but he himself was also a threat." And, by the way, when Gabriel looks at the scantly clothed females on Rio's beaches, like the ones pictured above, he becomes frightened. The Brazilian author's strong academic background in philosophy and psychology is much in evidence.
What a novel. Garcia-Roza has expanded what it means to write a detective yarn. Don't miss it.
Brazilian author Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza, 1936-2020
Comments
Post a Comment