Very disappointed in "Hotel Brasil". The book starts out with an acceptable plot premise and some decent writing. From there it's a slow trek downhill. After some slow plot development, the author appears to get bored and takes some tangential (at best) diversions. The original plot goes nowhere as we are seemingly expected to invest in newly introduced characters. The book loses focus and one starts to wonder if the author had several short stories he decided to force into one novel. The writing deteriorates and seems rushed. The book ends with a "happy ending" for some of the characters and a patched on seemingly contrived ending to resolve the initial plot. Not worth your time. ( )

Frei Betto (aka Carlos Alberto Christo) is a Brazilian writer, political activist, and a Dominican friar. He has an interesting biography, which includes being imprisoned for four years as a political prisoner by a dictatorship in Brazil starting in 1969 for smuggling ten people out of Brazil. He was involved in "liberation theology" and social justice and visited with Fidel Castro and Mikhail Gorbachev. Betto's book on his interviews with Castro became a bestseller in the 1980's. Betto again met with Castro in February 2014.

Hotel Brasil is Betto's first English-translated book although he has previously published dozens books. The translation is by Jethro Soutar and the translated book is well-done, conveying Betto's prose in a rich way. It is a murder mystery, subtitled the mystery of the severed heads and involves a rundown guesthouse or residential hotel in Rio de Janiero where one of the residents is found murdered, his head severed off his body, and his eyeballs stolen. The police inspector (Del Bosco) then, as in a classic who-done-it mystery, interviews each of the residents of the hotel, positing possible motives for the murder.

The story is more about the characters in the hotel and they are all characters. In particular, it is about a reporter and editor named Candid0, who is a resident of the hotel and who also counsels the street youth of Rio, attempting to protect them from police abuses, and who ends up sheltering a twelve-year old streetgirl who escaped from juvenile detention house. Candido roams the city on his motorbike, especially at night. By day, Candido read his numerous books and dreamed.
The story does document numerous police abuses and the fact that the streets of Rio are swarming with abandoned or runaway youths in the various favalas. The book legitimately has a South American feel and is more poetic than hardboiled with a feel that is more Gabriel Garcia Marquez than Raymond Chandler or even Agatha Christie.

The story begins with the discovery of the severed head: "He'd seen it out of the corner of his eye, without meaning to see it. Now he couldn't believe what he saw: a head lying dumped on the floor." The victim was Seu Marcal, and older man who dealt in gemstones and lived in the hotel. Marcal had the "honey-tongued tone of a man whose business it was to make money while letting customers think they were getting a bargain."

It is a rich, lush book filled with prose that gives the reader a flavor of Rio de Janiero, the crime, the corruption, the poverty, the abuses heaped upon the street children who were ever-present. It tells the story of numerous characters and their motivations. The focus is on Candido, although he does not narrate the story. The crime story, though, is the background for this glimpse of Brazilian life. ( )

Published in 1999 and set in a boarding house/hotel in Rio de Janeiro, this paints a similar picture of life in urban Brazil (see my most recent review of HAPPINESS IS EASY set in Sao Paolo): residents frightened of being mugged or worse, richer residents who travel in bullet proof cars, everyone keeping off the streets at night, but we see things from the seamier side.

The first victim is a travelling salesman who deals mainly in gemstones. He was stabbed through the heart first, then beheaded, and at some stage his eyeballs were removed. We see the crime through the eyes of Professor Candido, one of the other hotel residents, who does casual editorial work and works with street children. The other residents are regarded by the police as sexual deviants: among them a journalist, a wanna-be actress, a procurer of young girls, a transvestite, and a government political aide who returned to Brazil from Paris during the political amnesty. Each of them is interviewed by the police. Delegado Del Bosco is convinced the murder was an outside job with the assistance of one of the residents.

At first the structure of the novel is almost pure Agatha Christie. There is a body, perhaps more gruesomely murdered than in a Christie. Initially the suspects are all the residents of the hotel including the caretaker and the owner. They are questioned in turn by the police, attempting to determine where they were when the crime was committed. Each is asked whom they suspect, the police officer hoping for a confession from someone. In the style of AND THEN THERE WERE NONE the residents begin to die, their deaths also featuring decapitation.

However the crimes at Hotel Brasil soon take second place to the activities of the delinquents that Candido is attempting save. Although there are further murders in the hotel and other deaths, in the long run I have to agree with the final line of the synopsis an "account of life at the edge of Brazilian society, dressed up as a murder mystery." To be honest I was disappointed. ( )

This was a delightful take on the detective genre with a group of quirky inhabitants of a small residential hotel in Rio where a series of particularly gruesome murders occur. The victims were calm and beheaded with their eyes removed. The detective in charge is Del Bosco, a rather dull racist ( "a negro standing still is suspicious, a running one is guilty.”) with quite loose morals. He is primarily interested in closing the case as expeditiously as possible even, if it requires intimidation and torture. He interviews all of the inhabitants of the hotel--an eclectic group including a newspaperman, politician, janitor, landlady, madam, transvestite, writer and a mysterious cat. The murder investigation is combined with another subplot that follows the protagonist, Candido, a good natured writer, as he becomes romantically involved with his collaborator, Monica, and a captivating orphan street urchin named Biatriiz. As Biatriz participates with other children of the Rio slums in various illegal activities, Candido is motivated to rescue her. The rather simple plot ends well but the murder is never solved by the police. Instead the reader learns who the culprit is. The novel was a light read, but engaging and totally satisfying. ( )