When Violence and Love Collide

THE SILENCE OF THE RAIN

A Novel

By Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

Translated by Benjamin Moser

Henry Holt

264 pages, $24

Readers who like their thrillers to possess something beyond a fast-paced, tricky plot will find much to marvel over in Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza’s “The Silence of the Rain.” A bestselling novelist who lives in Rio de Janeiro, Garcia-Roza has written a crime trilogy, with the last two installments also slated to be translated into English. In typical thriller fashion, this novel opens with what police assume to be a murder, in this case, of a corporate executive named Ricardo Carvalho. But the crime scene appears nearly pristine to Inspector Espinosa, the quirky and contemplative detective assigned to the case, who, like most of the story’s other characters, becomes as intriguing as the crime itself.

Something of a literary buff, the divorced Espinosa spends a good deal of time mulling over the intricacies of character, both those he finds in literature and in real life. Despite his idiosyncrasies, Espinosa never comes off as a mere caricature of the offbeat detective; rather, he reminds us that policemen may also be as complex and as ordinary as anyone else. After ruminating over the possible scenarios at the crime scene, Espinosa decides to pay Carvalho’s widow a visit. During one of their early conversations, Bia Vasconcelos notices the detective’s interest in her painting supplies and asks if he knows much about art:

“ ‘Not really ... unless, like Thomas De Quincey, you consider murder one of the fine arts.’ He added: ‘Have you read Thomas De Quincey?

“ ‘I’m afraid not, Inspector. What did he write about?

“ ‘About crime and his experiments with opium. He had a real passion for murder, though he himself was a very mild mannered Englishman who wouldn’t have hurt a fly. He wrote about murder; he didn’t practice it himself.’ ”

Bia finds Espinosa’s comments disconcerting because she is accustomed to thinking that the average Brazilian cop is a dunce. But as this scene develops, it becomes clear that Bia’s discomfort with hazy class boundaries might trouble her more than any genuine feeling of guilt over her husband’s death.

Espinosa’s investigation becomes more complicated when he finds himself attracted to two of the women involved: Bia and Alba Antunes, the owner of a local gym who also happens to be the girlfriend of Julio Azevedo, the man who was seen having a beer with Bia at a local club on the night of her husband’s death.

Predictable as these love tangles may sound, Garcia-Roza carries them off with panache. His success in depicting a smitten murder detective arises from his capacity to reveal character well beneath the surface. Espinosa spends nearly as much time mulling the subtleties of these two women’s personalities as he does trying to solve the crime. But we never feel that his attractions cause Espinosa to shirk his duties. Rather, puzzling out the easily observable and more hidden natures of Bia and Alba assists him in puzzling out the possibilities of Carvalho’s death.

When Espinosa contemplates the various players in his investigation, he finds himself especially drawn to thinking about Julio, the man with ties to the two women Espinosa is drawn to: “I couldn’t deny a certain curiosity about Julio Azevedo. What made him superior? Granted, he was good-looking, had a nice voice, was an architect and a professor and had an answering machine that responded in three languages. Curiosity was a kind of attraction. And yet I didn’t like him. Frightened, hesitant, romantically ambivalent, professionally ambiguous, a careless seducer ... the picture was strangely familiar .... It could have been Julio or it could have been me.”

Espinosa’s capacity for introspection and self-criticism breathes fresh air into the crime novel genre, and goes a long way in illustrating the old axiom about the importance of self-knowledge in the solving of any sort of problem. Garcia-Roza’s interest in the interior of character also has the effect of lulling the reader; we can almost forget that we are visiting a brutal world. But we do not remain lulled forever, and the violence seems all the more shocking for our attention having been quietly held elsewhere.

Those readers who expect and require a certain quota of graphic violence in their crime stories will doubtlessly feel gratified, while some of the rest of us may wish Garcia-Roza could have pulled off a conclusion with the same understated finesse of the rest of the novel.