São Paulo Noir

April 1, 2018
Bellotto has no trouble discovering dark doings in what he describes as "the most populous city in Brazil, the Americas, the Portuguese-speaking world, and the entire Southern Hemisphere."São Paulo's size and diversity give this volume's 14 storytellers room to roam. There's tony but fading Ciadade Jardim, where Amelinha lives out her declining years with the help of her maid in Ilana Casoy's "Boniclaide and Mrs. Als." And there's modern, fast-paced Mooca, where Jô Soares' detective probes the death of an elderly woman who comes to São Paulo to visit her niece in "My Name is Nicky Nicola." But from genteel Panamerica to rough and tumble Baixo Augusta, what stands out in Bellotto's volume is the placement of women at the center of many stories. In addition to Boniclaide, there are three other maids: Cléo and Lena, who clean hotel rooms in Vanessa Barbara's "Cross Contamination," and Dulcinea, who works for the flaky title character in Mario Prata's "Teresão." There are prostitutes, including the crafty Cínthia in Ferréz's "Flow," the gentle but nameless girl from Minas Gerais in Marcelo Rubens Paiva's "The Final Table," and the feisty, unforgettable heroine of Drauzio Varella's "Margot." Women's stories are often family stories. In editor Bellotto's "Useless Diary," a young woman searches for her twin brother, and in "The Force Is With Me," co-written by veteran author Beatriz Bracher and 17-year-old Maria S. Carvalhosa, a teenager from Rio gets to know her maiden aunt. But women on their own can be dangerous, as Olivia Maia points out in "Coffee Stain."In the year of #MeToo, Bellotto's Akashic entry has a timely feel, giving noir a host of feminine faces.

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April 30, 2018
Bellotto, who edited the strong Rio Noir (2016), doesn’t fare as well with this anthology featuring Brazil’s largest city. That one of the 13 stories stretches “noir” beyond reason doesn’t help: Jô Soares eats up a lot of space with “My Name Is Nicky Nicola,” which features a bumbling detective much like farcical French detective Jacques Clouseau. Better is Fernando Bonassi’s “24-Hour Service,” in which a senator’s son’s screwup leads the senator to call the governor, who calls someone else, and so forth down the line until a minor functionary gets a call at 3:10 a.m. and begins the arduous task of cleaning up the son’s mess. A hotel maid is a razor-sharp detective in Vanessa Barbara’s brief and effective “Cross Contamination.” An obese woman hits on several unusual weight-loss regimens in Mario Prata’s darkly humorous “Teresão.” A poor young girl’s luck seems as bad and as lurid as Candide’s in Drauzio Varella’s “Margot,” but a knife can solve a lot of problems. This entry ranks as only a fair addition to Akashic’s acclaimed noir series.