Southwesterly Wind

At his 29th birthday party Garbiel Alzira is told by a psychic that by his next birthday he will have killed someone. As the date of Gabriel’s birthday looms he becomes increasingly agitated at the thought the prediction will come true and so he begins to trawl Rio de Janeiro looking for the psychic and also asks the police, in the form of Inspector Espinoza in the Copacabana district of the city, to investigate the murder which has yet to be committed. Eventually someone connected to Gabriel does die but there’s no evidence that the person was even murdered let alone by Gabriel. Has a crime been committed and if so was Gabriel responsible?

In terms of crime fiction as the English-writing/speaking world knows it, this book would show more barely register on the genre’s scale, owing far more to the Latin American literary, often poetic narrative style though there are only fleeting glimpses (thankfully for me) of the magical realism that has been prevalent in other Latin American books I’ve read. It doesn’t seem to feel the need to finish all the threads very neatly and much more of the ending is left up to the reader to imagine than would be the case with a more traditional procedural.

The characters are depicted in an observational style but there is depth to them too. When we’re introduced to Gabriel’s widowed mother, who he lives with, she is sitting in her ground floor apartment’s window watching for her son to come down the street as she does every single day and she almost hyperventilates when he is 40 minutes late. She is making herself a cushion to aid in her window-watching and has fashioned herself a ladder to help her climb up to her perch which shows, in words other authors would take two chapters to describe while Garcia-Roza takes about a page, how obsessed she is with her son and how pivotal her relationship with him is to her daily life. Espinoza is almost her exact opposite being fairly cynical, having no close family living in the country and not being remotely interested in domestic pursuits. He is however very funny and does have some nice relationships including one with his 13-year old neighbour who he allows to convince him to acquire a puppy. With all the characters Garcia-Roza kept me wondering whether they are who they appear to be on first acquaintance and I loved that. In fact the least successful person in the book was the central character of Gabriel who was a little more predictable from my point of view than the others.

Southwesterly wind really is quite a simple story but it captivated me so completely I managed to read the last half of it while at the hairdresser’s (one of the few places I normally don’t bother to try and read due to the cacophony created by the blaring radio, shouted conversations and duelling hairdryers). I really had no idea what would come next but I had a rather desperate need to find out and the writing style lent itself to the book being quickly devoured. It is one of those crime fiction novels that I can imagine recommending to all sorts of readers, not just fellow mystery lovers, as it is first and foremost an intriguing yarn about intriguing people. It just happens to have a crime at its core, or the possibility of one at any rate. show less

One dry, distant, flat mystery. As though one of the Nouveau Roman French novelists of the 1960s had some blood pumped in her (not much) and was shipped to Brazil.

Worth reading just to chew over another way to write a mystery.

3rd in the Inspector Espinoza series set in Rio de Janeiro.

This is more psychological thriller of a subdued nature than a mystery or a police procedural. Yes, there are murders but that actually is second to the mental deterioration of Gabriel, a 30 year old young man to whom a psychic pedicted, 2 months before his birthday, that Gabriel would kill someone in a nonaccidental way before his birthday. Gabriel's resulting descent into madness is fascinating.

Additional spice to the story is provided by subplots involving a romantic interest and a young neighbor who is prodding a reluctant Espinoza into dog ownership. The endingis a very nice twist, although there is one very loose, dangling end that is never satisfactorily tied up.

Rio show more itself is nowhere near the major character in the story as it was in the first two books, but is still there as a backdrop. show less

I found that the story dragged but ended quite well .

El recién ascendido comisario Espinosa debe enfrentarse a un peculiar misterio: Gabriel, un joven de treinta años, se presenta en su despacho para confesarse autor de un crimen que aún no ha cometido y cuyos detalles desconoce. El atípico, tímido y reflexivo detective intentará resolver este enigma mientras distintas personas próximas al entorno de Gabriel van muriendo de forma violenta. Río de Janeiro, con sus duros contrastes, su cálido ambiente tropical y sus zonas oscuras, se convierte en un espacio-personaje por el que deambulan los distintos actores de esta sugerente intriga policial que el autor construye con generosas dosis de energía narrativa y profundidad psicológica.