Inspector Espinosa, hero of the crime series by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza, is a reader of crime stories himself. \u00a0His flat in Copacabana is overflowing with books. You get the feeling this is where he wants to spend all his time, but\u2026 there\u2019s crime on the streets and he has to solve it. On foot, mainly.<\/p>\n
As a real cop, Espinosa would be unusual. As a crime fiction hero,<\/span>\u00a0not so much. He\u2019s a thinking man, but not averse to action and the odd bit of bed gymnastics. The kind of hero a professor of psychology or philosophy might dream up in his leisure hours. (Which \u00a0reflects Garcia-Roza\u2019s academic career in those fields before he turned to writing at the age of 60.)<\/p>\n The appeal of the Inspector Espinosa series lies in the way the reader is aware of the depth of thought behind it, without those deep thoughts getting in the way of the entertainment.<\/p>\n After rushing through his first novels as fast as I could find them,\u00a0Pursuit<\/em>broke my momentum exactly because in that book the balance tilted too far into psychology. After ploughing through it with a heavy heart, I actually stopped looking for Garcia-Roza\u2019s books. However, nostalgia for those early books got the better of me this week and I tried his latest,\u00a0Alone in the Crowd<\/em>\u2026 and it was good!<\/p>\n I now have the exciting prospect of hunting out\u00a0Blackout<\/em>\u00a0and seeing if that\u2019s up to his usual standard as well.<\/p>\n Apart from tightly plotted, psychologically motivated crime stories, you get the additional bonus of virtual visits to what must be a fascinating environment \u2013 the inner suburbs of Rio de Janeiro. The action takes place at Ipanema beach and the Copa, Copabana. (Which is much more fun if you can keep Barry Manilow at bay.)<\/p>\n Read them in order, starting with\u00a0The Silence of the Rain<\/em>, and you have a good 12 hours or so of low-cost travel to an exciting destination where everyone goes\u00a0ah<\/em>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Inspector Espinosa, hero of the crime series by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza, is a reader of crime stories himself. \u00a0His flat…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[24,28],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":216,"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions\/216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}