Southwesterly Wind Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza (Translated by Benjamin Moser) Picador £15.99 hbk Rel: Dec 2004 Catherine Hunt

Sergeant Espinosa is a thinker. When a young man asks to see him and confesses to a crime he has not yet committed, Espinosa is intrigued. Gabriel has been told by a party entertainer and fortune teller that he will murder someone before his next birthday and he wants police protection from himself. Espinosa has a great deal of paperwork to deal with but he puts his colleague, young Welber, on the case. Meanwhile, Gabriel decides to track down his tormentor himself and spends hours after work each night searching the fast food outlets of Rio de Janeiro for the psychic who is ruining his life.

This is a quiet book with a slow, patient build up of suspense. Will Gabriel’s mother find out what is bothering her son? Will Olga, the girl he works with, persuade him that his fears are groundless? The reader is never sure whether or not there will be a crime but the depiction of Gabriel’s increasing paranoia is realistic and scary. His sad life is contrasted with Espinosa’s for the sergeant finds happiness in so many tiny things: his young neighbour, Alice who is trying to persuade him to buy a Labrador puppy, how to make the perfect ham and cheese sandwich, whether or not to let his growing skyscraper of books collapse before he buys them a bookcase...

Espinosa is an original, a welcome addition to the ranks of fictional cops. Even more welcome is the information that Garcia-Roza has written two earlier books, The Silence of the Rain and December Heat.