Goodreads | Perfect Hatred by Leighton Gage - Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists

Goodreads | Perfect Hatred by Leighton Gage - Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists:

My foray into Brazilian police procedurals was rewarding indeed. A terrorist kills a woman using her baby and carriage to hide a bomb which he detonates just as a policeman is about to inquire as to the baby's lack of response. Some 350 miles south, a popular candidate for political office is assassinated.

Chief Inspector Mario Silva, of the Federal Police, immediately takes charge of the investigation. Fortunately, the bomb, which had been placed under the child, had contained numerous shards of hardware and a washer had gone through the child, slowing its trajectory enough so it bent part of the carriage frame. That meant there would be some of the child's DNA available for identification. (As an aside, I had no idea there was such a thing as "post-detonation taggants." They are bomb-proof, unique particles that are added to explosives so that they can be traced back to sellers and places of origin. Interesting.

Politics being what it is in Brasilia, when the politician, a relative unknown, is assassinated, Silva must focus his efforts on that case rather than the sixty plus people who had been killed in the bombing. It soon becomes complicated, as good mysteries must, and we learn the assassinated politician, Plinio, a revered man, had several enemies, many of whom were not immediately obvious.

Lots of interesting information about Brazil and its relationships with other countries, particularly Paraguay (and most of that not complimentary.) Little snippets of historical information that some readers may find unnecessary but which I always find fascinating, e.g., re Lebanon, "Each new outbreak of violence plunged the country deeper into chaos and caused more of her children to seek new homes abroad. Many chose Brazil. By the beginning of the 1990s, there were, it was said with some justification, more Lebanese in São Paulo than in Beirut. But, before the refugees, before the great torrent of immigration began, there were a few young Lebanese upon whom Brazil exerted its attraction, not as a refuge, but as a land of limitless opportunity."

Siilva finds himself under personal attack in the form of an irate land owner who wants to kill him as well as in a battle with pervasive corruption intertwined with an increasingly dangerous radical Islamic group

A solid read.

Thanks to the publisher for this ARC in exchange for my always uninfluenced review. I never review books I don't like.