BURIED STRANGERS
by Leighton Gage
When a secret cemetery baffles São Paulo police, their investigation sends one of their own to the graveyard.
A frisky dog’s discovery of a bone blossoms into a full-fledged case of serial murder when a mass of graves is discovered in a chilly rain forest to the south of the city. Instead of assigning subordinates, local district detective Yoshiro Tanaka seizes the case himself. Medical examiner Gilda Caropreso confirms that 24 of the 37 corpses were children. In São Paulo, the broad investigation is headed up by Chief Inspector for Criminal Matters Mario Silva (Blood of the Wicked, 2008). Wishing to pursue the matter without interference, Tanaka withholds much of the information he’s gathered and proceeds on his own. Tracing the furniture of one family of victims to a secondhand shop, he gently grills the owner Ribiero. Ribiero and his partner Claudia immediately call their boss, an unnamed crime kingpin who lives in a mansion. After narrowing down the time frame of the murders to the last four to ten years, Silva’s men seek new leads. Meanwhile, detective Babyface Gonçalves uses his charm to romance a Wiccan suspect who may have ordered the killings as religious sacrifices. After Tanaka visits the kingpin’s mansion and boldly solicits a bribe, Claudia urges that Ribiero be removed. But her boss goes her one better by killing Tanaka in a spectacular explosion.
A gritty police procedural that benefits from its offbeat locale and an impressive tapestry of believable characters.