Southwesterly Wind

Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

I really enjoy these novels about a police detective in Rio de Janeiro. I've never been to Brazil, but the atmosphere the writer creates seems very authentic. The society he describes seems so different from ours in Britain and yet so similar. Maybe I'll go there one day and walk on Ipanema beach.

Extract

'Last year, some friends from work were with me in a bar celebrating my birthday. One of the people there, who wasn't with us, offered to give me a birthday present: a reading of my future. I'm completely skeptical about that kind of thing, but it seemed like fun and my friends kept at me, so I agreed. The guy made a few general predictions, the kind all psychics make, and then finished by saying that before my next birthday I would kill somebody and that the murder wouldn't be an accident.'

'And you believed him?'

'I had to. He didn't have any reason to be telling me something like that.'

'And how long before your next birthday?'

'Less than two months.'

Parallels