Rio Noir

"In the latest entry to this globetrotting series, a man goes for a tarot reading and winds up poisoned by the daughter he never knew he had. And that's just one story in a collection that takes us down the mysterious alleys and mazy favelas of Rio, just in time for the Olympic Games."
—O, the Oprah Magazine
"The latest installment of Akashic's geographically wide-ranging mystery series lands in Rio de Janeiro, a city whose famous imagery—the massive statue of Christ the Redeemer, Sugarloaf mountain, the beautiful beaches—constitutes the public face of the city, but behind lurks a 'world of shadows, blood, intrigue, violence, hideouts, and mystery'...A good introduction to writers of the region and to the dark side of a very sunny place."
—Booklist
"As Rio de Janeiro prepares to host the 2016 summer Olympics amid fears of the Zika virus, this anthology of 14 dark and violent short stories set in the Brazilian city might give prospective visitors more reasons to be concerned...A solid addition to Akashic's acclaimed noir series."
—Publishers Weekly
"Bellotto has assembled here a winning cast of writers whose own procurers, colonels, cops, traffickers, socialites, slum-dwellers, embezzlers, tourists, detectives, journalists, politicians, assassins, outlaws, and coup-plotters jump off every page and into your bed. This anthology is delicious and deliciously discomforting."
—Words Without Borders, Included in The Watchlist
"These clever, well written stories are for anyone who wants to get a 'behind the scenes' look at Rio, where drugs, violence, sex and murder are major themes. All of these stories show Rio as a city that is teeming with life, even if some of it is dark and shadowy."
—Susanne's Booklist
Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.
Brand-new stories by: Tony Bellotto, Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza, MV Bill, Luiz Eduardo Soares, Guilherme Fiuza, Arthur Dapieve, Victoria Saramago, Arnaldo Bloch, Adriana Lisboa, Alexandre Fraga dos Santos, Marcelo Ferroni, Flávio Carneiro, Raphael Montes, and Luis Fernando Verissimo. All stories translated from Portuguese by Clifford Landers (Coelho's The Alchemist, etc.).
From the introduction by Tony Bellotto:
"The images of Rio de Janeiro are well known: high rises aligned along white sandy beaches, a blue sea, freshwater lakes, and luxuriant forests that stretch through winding mountains of stone...the open arms of Christ the Redeemer blessing a happy, cordial, mixed-race people ever ready to dance a samba or offer a welcoming smile to the tourists who move about in the streets admiring beautiful women shimmying nude atop floats in Carnival parades...Opa!
This is not a tourist guide. The city revealed in this book is a different Rio. Even though famous landscapes are present in the pages of Rio Noir, what is exposed here is a world of shadows, blood, intrigue, violence, hideouts, and mystery (and also of humor, of course, as is necessary with any undertaking involving Cariocas)...Whether we have succeeded in deciphering an enigma with the dramas of our procurers, card readers, colonels, cops, traffickers, socialites, slum dwellers, embezzlers, tourists, brokers, detectives, journalists, politicians, assassins, editors, outlaws, travelers, coup plotters, writers, lovers, and everyday citizens, I don't know. But we have surely added a large shadow to the sunny landscape of this...