The Body from Ipanema

Rating:
Summary: Good feel for Rio, mystery not quite there
Review: Musician Tony Kozol is in Brazil for a concert when one of the band leader's gofers introduces him to Rio's criminal underworld. Deep in Rio's favellas, Tony learns that sometimes going along is the only way to stay alive. Still, life is mostly good--he has fallen in love with a beautiful woman, had a paying job, and Rio is in full carnival mode, with some of the world's most beautiful women on full display.

Then the entire thing falls apart. His boss seems to lose faith in him, the gangsters are putting pressure on him to support them in a major heist, and his girlfriend seems to have a powerful boyfriend who wants to see Tony out of the way no matter what it takes. Tony, along with his friend and sidekick Rock Bottom, will have to move fast to stay ahead of the wave of disaster bearing down on them.

Author J. R. Ripley does a convincing job portraying Rio de Janeiro in high carnival season. The samba beat, the contrasts of extreme wealth and abject poverty, and the curious position of law enforcement (being sometimes more dangerous than the people they are supposed to protect against) all ring true. The mystery itself is less convincing. When Brazil's Federal Police finally ask Tony and Rock for their assistance, one can only wonder why--it certainly isn't explained, nor does it make a great deal of sense. As a mystery reader, I also expect to learn all the clues that the point of view protagonist learns. In THE BODY FROM IPANEMA, a key clue was withheld from the reader but not from Tony, making the mystery perhaps more interesting from the reader's perspective, but fundamentally cheating on the implicit contract between author and reader.

Rating:
Summary: An exciting, tangled web of criss-crossing motivations
Review: Set in the festive Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro, The Body From Ipanema: A Tony Kozol Mystery by J.R. Ripley is an exciting, tangled web of criss-crossing motivations and cold-blooded murder. Protagonist Tony Kozol is back, this time working for a beautiful and sensational Latin pop singer. But the streets of Ipanema have muggers too - and one of them, after mugging Tony, mysteriously turns up with a cut throat. This is only the start of a whirlwind chain of events to lure Tony in ever deeper into a dark and wild urban maze of deadly human motives, in this gripping mystery. Also very highly recommended are the earlier novels in the Tony Kozol mystery series: Stiff In The Freezer (1892339048, ...); Skulls Of Sedona (0373263902, ...); and Lost In Austin (0373264178, ...).