This image is the cover for the book Blood of the Wicked, A Chief Inspector Mario Silva Investigation

Blood of the Wicked, A Chief Inspector Mario Silva Investigation

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 . . .

Leighton Gage

Leighton Gage (1942–2013) wrote six other books in the Chief Inspector Mario Silva series: Blood of the Wicked, Dying Gasp, Every Bitter Thing, A Vine in the Blood, Perfect Hatred, and The Ways of Evil Men. Since 1973, he spent part of each year in Santana do Parnaiba, Brazil, where he met his wife, Eide. His books have been translated into French, Italian, Finnish, and Dutch.

Soho Press