EVERY BITTER THING

Brazilian Inspector Silva (Dying Gasp, 2010, etc.) and his team track the most brutal serial killer he's ever seen.

Petroleum engineer Jonas Palhares is savagely murdered while away from home on a job in a rough Rio neighborhood, and renowned author Paulo Cruz meets the same fate on the resort island of Itaparica. It's not until Juan Rivas, the hedonistic son of Venezuelan foreign minister Jorge Rivas, is shot, then violently beaten, that the work of perhaps Brazil's most violent serial killer first comes to light. To Chief Inspector Mario Silva and detectives Arnaldo and Pereira, the Rivas case looks open and shut. Juan was the lover of his upstairs neighbor, the much older Tomás Garcia, who also happens to be a close friend of Rivas Senior and claims that he once bedded daddy as well. Garcia also admits that Juan spurned him for a younger lover. Silva gets headaches just thinking about the backlash that could follow the scandalous press coverage surrounding a Garcia trial. When the earlier victims are discovered and ballistics matches the bullets in all victims, Silva releases Garcia but faces a larger challenge as he seeks a link between the victims. He finds it in a list of 11 passengers who traveled in business class on Flight 8101 the past November. Even as police are tracking down the rest of the list, the killer continues, adding 8101's flight attendants to his victims.

Silva's solid fourth moves briskly, with colorful characters and crackling banter between the detectives.