From Publishers Weekly
Melo (The Killer) is a promising literary crime novelist, one of a new crop of Brazilian suspense writers that includes Rubem Fonseca. In her second book, she focuses on the career of Jos? Guber, a bottom-rung hack who rips off classic detective story plots and turns them into pulp fiction for a second-rate publishing house run by a philistine named Wilmer da Silva. Researching a plot involving death by snakebite, Jos? meets Melissa at a serology laboratory. Melissa, fervent about all things reptilian, soon becomes Jos?'s lover, sealing her passion by giving him an illegal boa constrictor. Jos? knows Melissa is married, but what he doesn't know is that she is becoming rich defying Brazilian law and dealing venom on the black market. Convincing Jos? that her husband Ronald beats her (which is not true), Melissa persuades him to participate in her scheme to kill Ronald, with the help of a deadly jararaca. To her dismay, Ronald merely loses a leg, while distracted Jose loses his job. But his former boss's secretary, Ingrid, has always liked Jos?, and she helps him find work as a corny self-help writer. When Jos? realizes that supportive Ingrid is more his kind of lady than the cunning Melissa, the spurned woman shows her fangs. Melo saturates her prose with literary references, effectively intellectualizing what is at heart a zesty suspense novel with a kinky, unpredictable murderess. Jos? as a "babe-magnet" is unconvincing, but he's hilarious when submitting his book "outlines" to Wilmer. Melo keeps the tale oscillating between morbid intrigue and hilarity, deftly skewering the publishing industry in the process. (Sept.) FYI: The Killer won the French Prix Deux Ocean and the German Deutscher Krimi Preis.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Brazilian screenwriter and novelist Melo (The Killer, 1997) shows great ingenuity with suggestion and implicationbut in a somewhat ordinary, noir-ish novel about people who cant be with the ones they love, so they kill the ones theyre with. Jos Guber, a Sao Paulo writer of cheesy mysteries and pulp paperbacks, is looking for something to enliven his plot proposals to his greedy, hard-to-please editor. He happens upon a serpentarium, where he meets Melissa, a beautiful scientist deeply fascinated by most things lethalsnake venom in particular. Jos, still struggling with his proposals, falls in love with Melissa, and together they conspire to kill her husband, who she claims regularly beats her. Joss mental states during the planning and execution of the murder are nicely reflected in the book proposals he continues to revise and submit, and husband Ronald is finally dispatched at the business end of Melissas pistol. We rejoin Jos after hes married and separated from Melissa (offstage), and reinvented himself as a writer of self-help books, handbooks on meditation, and, finally, Conversations With the Creator, a bestseller that suggests Joss newfound hubris. This sly joke is one of the novels genuine pleasures, as Melo includes interview transcripts with the newly idolized guru, commenting on his special relationship to God while hes fully aware of his scam. Having become lovers with Ingrid, his former publishers secretary, Jos then learns that Melissa came into a financial windfall after Ronalds death. Ingrids suspicions are suddenly raisedwith fatal consequences. The intrigue may please readers hungry for plot innovations, but the less-than-satisfying conclusion is sure to disappoint. --
Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
