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Hotel Brasil Frei Betto Jethro Soutar 9781908524270 Books

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Hotel Brasil Frei Betto Jethro Soutar 9781908524270 Books

Crime fiction needs more Frei Betto. A grisly murder mystery, yet light-hearted, even amusing. I never know whodidit in whodunnits, but the denouement surprised me. It still surprises me. I have no idea why the murderer murdered, let alone why they murdered so gruesomely. Perhaps my puzzlement lies in the nature of the characters in the Rio de Janeiro boarding house that is the story’s setting - a group of eccentrics worthy of a Gabriel Márquez novel.


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Hotel Brasil Frei Betto Jethro Soutar 9781908524270 Books Reviews

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 whodoneit 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."

Other residents of the hotel included Madame Larencia, who had "hair splashed with dye" and "diligently worked the nightclubs, the boates, and the cabares, meeting clients and taking orders." She essentially provided clients with girls to suit the client's tastes. She was "a cafetina, a bawd, a pimp." She would often wear "an enormous blonde wig and multicoloured bangles that dangled from her arms into her food."

Another resident was Rosaura Dorotea dos Santos whose "hair was immaculately combed, her nails were painted salmon pink and her skin was saturated in creams." She had moved to Rio to break into television and become a telenovela star. She decorated her walls with photographs of actors and spent hours in front of her mirror, "playing the roles of imaginary characters."

Another resident was Diamante Negro, a "transformista," meaning a transvestite who imitated singers in late-night cabaret shows. He tells the inspector that it must have been a pervert who chopped off the man's head because only a pervert would do that.

Rui Pacheco also lived in the hotel. "With his short curly hair, tortoise shell glasses, clipped moustache and hooked nose, Pacheco looked like a man without a sense of humor." He was involved in politics and had to flee the country before the dictatorship ended and amnesty granted to all exiles. Now, although dwelling in a rundown hotel, he was involved in politics and went to functions with the Governor.

Jorge Maldonaldo was the hotel caretaker. He was the jack of all trades. He had bright green eyes, a face full of pockmarks, and long ponytail. Dona Dio, who ran the hotel, treated him like a serf.

Marcelo Braga was a journalist end editor. He loved making headlines, and presenting stories. He went for a drink every day after work, going to whatever was the latest watering hole among hacks and there he would deliver alcohol-fueled rants about sports writing.

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.
The mystery in this novel is a shell for the real story focused on the life of a group of urban folks in Brazil living at the lower end of the class spectrum. Don’t read this if you are a real mystery fan looking to figure out the culprit from the clues or seeking a tightly-knit police procedural. There are no clues or evidence, just headless bodies with their eyes gouged out showing up in a hotel. Yes, all the characters are interviewed by the hapless police detective each time there is a murder but the detective never figures it out, although the reader knows on the last few pages. The detective’s conversations with the hotel guests simply shed light on their lives and the interactions among the hotel residents.

The hotel is really a pension where these folks live. The real action occurs in their conversations in TV lounge and around the boarding room style dinner table.

And what a fascinating bunch of single, lonely, financially struggling people we have.
The main character is a former teacher who writes and spends time helping poor kids in trouble with the police. There is an elderly semi-retired gemstone merchant, his socks showing through the holes in his shoes, who will try to sell you a ruby or an emerald. There’s a young female housecleaner waiting for her chance to be discovered and to become a star in Brazil’s famous telenovelas (soaps) industry. There’s the old madame, her face caked with a pound of cosmetics, whose line to her girls is “you aren’t a puta peddling yourself on the street; I have the men come to you.”

We also have a black nightclub singer who is a transformista. And then there is the part-time journalist whose goal is to solve the crimes before the police. There’s one way to make yourself a prime suspect. There’s the custodian; the first to be accused because – well he’s the custodian, and the police have to arrest somebody, don’t they? There’s a Marxist political aide and hanger-on. (If he’s so well-connected and important, why is he living in this place?) And maybe another half-dozen other fascinating characters including the cat-loving old lady who runs the pension “Don’t ever touch my broom.”

We have some romance as our main character starts falling in love with a woman he is working on a story with. And there is the glue-sniffing 12-year old prostitute the two are helping hide from the police.

In the course of the novel the real story becomes an indictment of Brazil’s corrupt law enforcement system. Fear of crime rules a lot of public life. The police use that fear as an authorization to do what they want. The cops and judges are in on it, getting a take of what is stolen and sometimes ordering the crimes in advance and selling stolen goods back to those victimized.

The author knows what he is writing about. He is a Dominican friar and a political activist. He was imprisoned for four years under Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1970’s and he was an adviser to former President Lula da Silva on two topics in this novel; child hunger and prison policy. This is a good read with a lot of local color of modern Brazil. It reminds me of two other good novels set in modern Brazil Blackout by L. A. Garcia-Roza and Turbulence by Chico Buarque.
Crime fiction needs more Frei Betto. A grisly murder mystery, yet light-hearted, even amusing. I never know whodidit in whodunnits, but the denouement surprised me. It still surprises me. I have no idea why the murderer murdered, let alone why they murdered so gruesomely. Perhaps my puzzlement lies in the nature of the characters in the Rio de Janeiro boarding house that is the story’s setting - a group of eccentrics worthy of a Gabriel Márquez novel.