Friday, September 11, 2015

The Body Snatcher - Patricia Melo

The Body Snatcher
Patricia Melo; Clifford E. Landers (translator)
Bitter Lemon, Sep 8 2015, $14.95
ISBN 9781908524539

He lost his telemarketing job in São Paolo so he moved to Corumba on the Bolivian border.  There he sleeps with Sulamita who keeps telling him to leave the small village to find work in the big city.

When he observes a plane crash into the nearby Paraguay River, he rushes to the site.  Realizing immediately he cannot help or get help in time to save the life of the dying pilot, he steals a watch and a backpack filled with cocaine that he later tries to sell.  When the police arrive, the body is missing.  At the same time the man’s drug sales angers the local mob who demand full remittance for the cocaine he “purchased”.  Abetted by Sulamita and a morgue’s employee, he blackmail’s the pilot’s affluent family who agree to pay him if he returns the corpse.  Now all he needs is an unrecognizable body.

This brilliant Brazilian corruption crime caper stars an antihero who’s spiraling out of control escapades lead to a series of misadventures to the audience’s reading pleasure.  Fast-paced from the start, the tremendous Body Snatcher will have fans seeking other works by Patricia Melo (see The Killer and Lost World).


Harriet Klausner

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