Ali Karim was a Board Member of Bouchercon [The World Crime & Mystery Convention] and co-chaired programming for Bouchercon Raleigh, North Carolina in 2015. He is Assistant Editor of Shots eZine, British correspondent for The Rap Sheet and writes and reviews for many US magazines & Ezines.
Readers of crime and thriller novels often mutter that many new releases are the ‘same old, same old’. This third novel by Joe Thomas does not fall into that observation. Together with its precursors Paradise City and Gringa; Playboy is set in the dark and savage streets of underworld São Paulo, Brazil, with a promised fourth book, to close this cult series, making a quartet of extraordinary political thrillers.
The authenticity that Thomas brings to this tale of South American corruption belays his research, one that does not anchor its narrative; instead it enhances it.
Police Detective Mario Leme finds himself in Praça Alexandre de Guzmão in São Paulo after an evening out. He finds himself at the epicenter of an investigation into the murder a young playboy, from a family of wealth and privilege.
The boy has a bullet-hole in his back, and Leme fears he may suffer the same fate when he’s bundled inside the back of an anonymous four-wheel drive, by two enforcers who have the air of the Military.
Leme, falls under suspicion of murder and could be a ‘fall-guy’ for a bigger fish; so not only has he to survive, but also has to clear his name.
The backdrop is unforgiving. Left-Wing Dilma Rousseff is clinging to power, by fingernails, with scandal and violence becoming a way to retain political power. Leme has friends but can they be trusted? Or even help? Because the murder appears linked to a conspiracy, or is it?
Carlos can’t help Leme, and he cannot investigate the murder directly to clear his name, but he is resourceful, especially when his back is to the wall, and his neck on the line.
The military police have Leme on a string, and so he has to use guile in uncovering why and who the dead playboy was.
Illustrating the striation with the society that is São Paulo, where the rich and the poor are kept apart by extremes not only political, but socio-economic, Mario Leme has to dip his instinct into dark waters to uncover the mess he found himself trapped within.
The conclusion leaves itself positioned robustly for the conclusion of this series of cult novels that are far from the ‘same old, same old’ that some readers of crime fiction mutter.
