Leighton Gage produces a literary hat trick with Perfect Hatred, the sixth novel in his acclaimed and award-winning Chief Inspector Mario Silva Investigations, set mostly in Brazil, where Leighton now makes his home. As Leighton notes on his homepage: “Silva has a big job. He’s a Brazilian Federal Cop. In his country there’s no FBI, no DEA, no Secret Service, no DHS, no CBP and most police corporations have no Internal Affairs Department. Mario and his colleagues have to do it all and more. And they do it while traveling a lot. The area of their responsibility is larger than the continental United States.”
In Perfect Hatred, Gage combines a suicide bombing with the 
assassination of a regional gubernatorial candidate to deliver what fellow writer Timothy Hallinan dubbed a “perfect thriller.” Kirkus Reviews also had praise for this installment, noting: “In his own hard-boiled, agreeably literate and tourist-cautioning fashion, [Gage has] made South America’s largest nation accessible to readers who might otherwise never have been exposed to its jungles—both the wild and urban varieties.” BookPage selected the novel as its mystery pick of the month, commenting: “Well-written police procedurals set in an exotic location . . . what’s not to like? Think of Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct transplanted to Brasília, and you wouldn’t be far off, although Gage’s stories exhibit a somewhat more serious bent…. hands down the first ‘do not miss’ mystery of 2013!” (more…)
Scene of the Crime 