Why is Brazil, northern Brazil in particular, a good setting for crime fiction?
Verisimilitude, for one thing: You can believe in cops who murder people because there are cops who murder people; you can believe in people that will kill you for your cell phone because there are people that will kill you for your cell phone; you can believe in the impunity of the rich, because it’s a fact that rich Brazilians seldom go to jail – no matter how grave their offense. Add drug lords who operate with the support of government officials (and, not uncommonly, are government officials). Add Indians living in a vast rain forest who’ve never had contact with modern civilization. Add the eight- and nine-year-old girls, working in brothels before their breasts have bud. The list goes on and on. There are hundreds, thousands of stories to be told. You mentioned the north. It’s a vast region that embraces several states and the Amazon rain forest as well. Salvador, in Bahia, was the capital long before Brasilia, long before Rio de Janeiro, and for a longer time than both of them p
