A Chief Inspector Mario Silva Investigation Series

Brazil is hosting soccer’s World Cup—and the police must solve the kidnapping of a star player’s mother—in this “world-class procedural series” (The Wall Street Journal).   It is the eve of the FIFA World Cup, the globe’s premier sporting event. The host country is Brazil. A victory for the home team is inextricably linked to the skills of the country’s principal striker, Tico “The Artist” Santos, and all the politicians in Brasilia, from the president of the Republic on down, have their seats squared away for the finale—where they hope to see Argentina, Brazil’s bitterest rival, humbled by the Brazilian eleven.   But then, just three weeks before the first game, Tico’s mother is kidnapped. The star is distraught. The public is appalled. The politicians are outraged. And the pressure is on Chief Inspector Mario Silva to get her back.   Suspects aren’t lacking. Among them, are a cabal of Argentineans, suspected of having spirited the lady away to put Tico off his game; the star’s gold-digging, top-model girlfriend, whom his mother dislikes and has been trying to get out of his life; his principal rival, who wants to play in Tico’s place, and the man whose leg Tico broke during a match, destroying his career . . .  

A Brazilian detective hunts a killer in the rain forest: “The Silva investigations have all the step-by-step excitement of a world-class procedural series” (The Wall Street Journal).   As Chief Inspector Mario Silva has learned, justice is hard to come by in Brazil, so when his niece tells him about a possible genocide deep in the jungle, he agrees to round up his team and charter a plane to Pará to check it out.   Thirty-nine natives have recently dropped dead of mysterious causes. Given the tense relationship between the Awana tribe and the white townsfolk nearby, Pará’s sole government-sponsored advocate for the native population, Jade Calmon, immediately suspects foul play and takes the two remaining Awana—a father and his eight-year-old son—into her custody. But when the father is discovered holding a bloody machete next to the body of a village big shot, just before Silva’s arrival, the plot thickens. Why would a peaceful man who doesn’t believe in alcohol turn into a drunken killer?  

“A perfect thriller” of crime, corruption, and terror in Brazil (Edgar Award–nominated author Timothy Hallinan).   Chief Inspector Mario Silva and his team have a heavy workload with several high-profile cases. First, a suicide bombing that was apparently the work of a militant Islamist group. Then, the assassination of a gubernatorial candidate in broad daylight at a campaign rally.   Silva begins to wonder if the two events could be related—and to complicate his investigation even further, a criminal with a very bad grudge against the chief inspector has been released from prison . . .  

A detective follows a missing girl into the jungles of Brazil—and uncovers a terrifying criminal conspiracy—in this “fast-paced” police procedural (Booklist).   The Brazilian federal police wouldn’t typically get involved in the case of missing teenage girl—but when the girl in question is the granddaughter of a prominent politician, Silva and his team are, of course, put on her trail. It leads them to Manaus, a jungle hellhole in the Amazon.   All sorts of unsavory characters can be found in the seedier corners of this South American country—and as Silva investigates, he finds troubling connections to human trafficking and snuff films. Now Silva must battle indifference, of both the ordinary and the depraved kind, to save those he can save, and find some semblance of justice for the others.  

A police detective finds a bizarre connection linking several murder victims in this “gripping” and gritty crime novel set in Brazil (Publishers Weekly).   The son of the foreign minister of Venezuela has been found dead in his apartment in Brasilia. Due to the political nature of the crime, Chief Inspector Mario Silva of Brazil’s federal police is called in to investigate.   As Silva delves deeper, he discovers that a chain of murders have occurred throughout Brazil, all with the same MO: victims are first shot in the stomach, then brutally beaten to death. One was a petroleum engineer, another a psychologist—but they have one puzzling thing in common: They were all passengers on TAB flight 8101 from Miami to São Paulo . . .  

With this “compelling plot, fascinating characters [and] an unrelentingly fast pace . . . Silva just may be South America’s Kurt Wallander” (Booklist).   In the woods on the outskirts of São Paulo, Brazil, a dog unearths a human bone, recently buried. Chief Inspector Mario Silva of the federal police and his team of investigators are called in from Brasilia and discover a clandestine cemetery. And then another.   Someone has secretly disposed of the bodies of hundreds of human beings—their corpses often interred in family groups. Now, to get to the bottom of these heinous deeds, Silva must navigate a twisted and dangerous web of politics, corruption, and greed.    

This “gripping crime fiction” is the first in the acclaimed police procedural series set in Brazil (Florida Sun-Sentinel).   Chief Inspector Mario Silva of Brazil’s federal police is a good cop in a bad system—Brazil’s justice system is rife with corruption, and constantly a beat behind criminal elements. But Silva and his team of colorful sidekicks—baby-faced Gonçalves, who is irresistible to lady witnesses, chubby, crass Nuñes, and Mara Carta, the chief of intelligence with a soft spot for Silva—still manage to crack their difficult and sometimes ugly cases.   In the interior of Brazil, landless workers are battling the owners of vast fazendas. When a visiting archbishop is assassinated, Silva is called upon to investigate. Then a newspaper owner, a TV journalist, a landowner’s son, and a priest are brutally killed, and Silva’s team faces a challenge unlike any before . . .