Alone in the Crowd (Inspector Espinosa Mysteries) - Hardcover

Inspector Espinosa unwittingly ignites the obsessions of a menacing misanthrope in the latest from the highly acclaimed mystery author

An elderly lady approaches the front desk at the Twelfth Precinct in Copacabana and demands to speak with the chief. Tired after a long day, she leaves without further explanation, promising to return. Two hours later, Doña Laureta is dead, and witnesses’ accounts vary as to whether she was pushed or fell in front of the bus that killed her on one of the busiest avenues in the city.

Veteran police chief inspector Espinosa quickly pinpoints a suspect in Hugo Breno, an unassuming bank teller whose solitary existence takes on a sinister cast as he shadows the inspector’s movements across the city. Meanwhile Espinosa discovers an unsettling connection from the past between himself and Breno, and must turn his trademark psychological inquiry inward to determine how murky memories of a murder from long ago might play into Doña Laureta’s untimely passing. Chilling and ultimately heart-stopping, Alone in the Crowd presents Espinosa as we have never seen him before, the man of detached expertise and calm self-assurance entangled in a mystery where reason alone will not suffice.

Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza is a bestselling novelist who lives in Rio de Janeiro. His Inspector Espinosa mysteries—The Silence of the Rain, December Heat, Southwesterly Wind, A Window in Copacabana, Pursuit, and Blackout—have been translated into six languages and are available in paperback from Picador.