Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza Pursuit

Pursuit

Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

Holt, Jan 2006, $23.00

ISBN: 0805074392

Copacabana, Brazil Chief Inspector Espinosa is on vacation when psychiatrist Dr. Arthur Nesse called pleading with him to help because he believes his seventeen years old daughter Leticia was kidnapped by a patient, Isadoro "call me Jonas" Cruz who previously had been stalking him. Though he knows he should send the good doctor to the police station, Espinosa agrees to do a little investigating as he is bored since his graphic designer wife Irene received the sudden invitation to attend a two-week seminar at New York's MOMA.

However, the prime suspect in at least the psychiatrist's mind turns up murdered. Other homicides follow all linked back to Dr. Nesse and Jonas. As Espinosa digs deeper into the backgrounds of Nesse and Jonas, he finds strange information that makes him wonder just who is the paranoid one, the doctor or the patient. The more the Brazilian cop learns, the more he thinks that Nesse stalked Jonas and perhaps killed him and the others. However, proving such a way out theory seems impossible and besides he still must rescue a missing teenager as well as stop the serial killer.

PURSUIT is a fantastic entry in an excellent police procedural series, one of the best on the market today as the Brazilian flavoring augments a delightful investigation. Espinosa is at his best in this case uncovering clues that make no sense as he, like readers, has stereotyped the psychiatrist and the patients. If he fails to make paradigm switches, he will fail. Fans who have not read the four previous translations of Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza (see THE SILENCE OF THE RAIN) are missing out on the works of a great novelist.

Harriet Klausner