Buried Strangers: A Chief Inspector Mario Silva Investigation - Hardcover

Leighton Gage has lived in Australia, Europe, and South America and traveled widely in Asia and Africa. He visited Spain in the time of Franco, Portugal in the time of Salazar, South Africa in the time of apartheid, Chile in the time of Pinochet, Argentina in the time of the junta, Prague, East Germany, and Yugoslavia under the Communist yoke. He is fluent in three languages and conversant in three more.
He has a daughter and three grandchildren in Paris, a daughter in The Netherlands, and two more in the United States. He and his wife divide their time between all three of those places and Brazil, her native country.

*Starred Review* Gage’s second Mario Silva mystery is an impressive follow-up to an excellent debut (Blood of the Wicked, 2008), with an equally compelling plot, fascinating characters, and a story so real and chilling, it’s hard to image it happening anywhere else but Silva’s Brazil. When a dog accidentally locates a secret burial site in an isolated park on the outskirts of São Paulo, Silva takes on the massive, country-spanning investigation. With the assistance of his officers in São Paulo, competent nephew Hector, dangerously charming Babyface, and some no-nonsense street cops, Silva directs the investigation from Brasilia, uncovering links to an agency reputed to smuggle Brazilians into the U.S. Although the new novel is an old-school police procedural in which procedure, not character development, is the focus of the story, the rapid character sketches are so vivid, and the dialogue between team members so snappy and realistic, it’s hard to imagine that these people are not real cops, working on a real crime. Gage’s talents include not only captivating characters and realistic plots, but also an intensely realized sense of place and an urelentingly fast pace that yanks the reader from beginning to end, unable to stop or pause, just as the cops are unable to take a day off. Silva just may be South America’s Kurt Wallander. --Jessica Moyer