A "HOUSTON CHRONICLE" SUMMER READING PICK
A Rio de Janeiro Thriller

An elderly lady approaches the front desk at the Twelfth Precinct in Copacabana and demands to speak with the chief. Tired after a long day, she leaves without further explanation, promising to return. Two hours later, Dona Laureta is dead, and witnesses' accounts vary as to whether she was pushed or fell in front of the bus that killed her on one of the busiest avenues in the city.

Veteran police chief inspector Espinosa quickly pinpoints a suspect in Hugo Breno, an unassuming bank teller whose solitary existence takes on a sinister cast as he shadows the inspector's movements across the city. Meanwhile Espinosa discovers an unsettling connection from the past between himself and Breno and must turn his trademark psychological inquiry inward to determine how murky memories of a murder from long ago might play into Dona Laureta's untimely passing. Chilling and ultimately heart-stopping, "Alone in the Crowd" presents Espinosa as we have never seen him before, the man of detached expertise and calm self-assurance entangled in a mystery where reason alone will not suffice.

A Rio de Janeiro Thriller
With no witnesses and no weapon, it seems like the case of the one-legged homeless man found lying in a cul-de-sac on Sao Joao Hill, shot through the heart, will remain unsolved. But Chief Inspector Espinosa can't shake thoughts of the hapless victim--who would target a penniless man who posed no physical threat? Focusing his incisive mind and his usual unhurried inquiry on a group of wealthy guests who dined at a nearby mansion on the rainy night of the murder, Espinosa interrogates his way into the lives of his suspects, exposing lies, cover-ups--and another murder.

Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro. Three policemen have been killed over the course of a few days. Espinosa, chief of the 12th Precinct, doesn't have much to go on. When the body of a woman connected to one of the dead cops is found on the sidewalk below her apartment window, things get even more complicated, as a reputed "witness"--the wife of a high-ranking government official--becomes obsessed with the case, and with Espinosa.
Nothing is quite as it first appears as Espinosa finds himself in his old haunts of Leme and Copacabana, and in the all-too-familiar terrain of corruption, greed, and fear.

Fascinating...seductive." --"The New York Times Book Review"
Chief of the Copacabana precinct Espinosa is more than happy to interrupt his paperwork when a terrified young man arrives at the station with a bizarre story. A psychic has predicted that he would commit a murder, it seems, and the prediction has become fact in the young man's mind. As the weather changes and the southwesterly wind -- always a sign of dramatic change -- starts up, what at first seems like paranoia becomes brutal reality. Two violent murders occur, and their only link is the lonely, clever man who had sought Espinosa out a few days earlier for help.
In "Southwesterly Wind," the third in this atmospheric, erotic series featuring the inimitable Inspector Espinosa, Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza once again "breathes fresh air into the crime novel genre." ("Los Angeles Times")
"Beautifully sad and seductive."--"Chicago Tribune"
"Beguiling and ingenious."--"Kirkus Reviews"
"One of the pleasures of reading Garcia-Roza derives from watching how he thwarts our narrative experiences. Throughout "Southwesterly Wind," he shuffles and reshuffles a limited deck of secondary characters to assemble startling patterns. [A] wry and poetic voice."
--Maureen Corrigan, "Newsday"
Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza is a bestselling novelist who lives in Rio de Janeiro.

A Rio de Janeiro Thriller A retired policeman spends a typically alcohol-filled evening with his girlfriend, a prostitute. When he wakes up the next morning, his wallet and car key are missing, his girlfriend has been murdered, and he can remember none of the events of the previous night. Inspector Espinosa, veteran detective and friend of the ex-cop, is convinced there's more here than meets the eye, and when other bodies begin turning up, he finds himself not only racing after a killer but falling in love.

In a parking garage in the center of Rio de Janeiro, corporate executive Ricardo Carvalho is found dead in his car, a bullet in his head, his wallet and briefcase missing. Inspector Espinosa is called in to investigate the apparent robbery and murder, but the world-weary Espinosa knows that things are not always as they seem. Carvalho’s recently acquired one-million-dollar life insurance policy and the subsequent disappearance of his secretary Rose complicate matters—as does Espinosa’s attraction to Carvalho’s beautiful widow, one of the suspects. And when two more people turn up dead, Espinosa must speed up his investigation before anyone else becomes a casualty.