According to the police, the victim was stabbed in the heart before the head was separated from the body. As the investigation continues other hotel clients are decapitated, usually with the head found delicately balanced on the knees of the sitting victim. A witty, touching account of life at the edge of Brazilian society, dressed up as a murder mystery.

Frei Betto: Frei Betto, born 1944, is a Brazilian writer, political activist, liberation theologian and Dominican friar. He was imprisoned for four years in the 1970s by the military dictatorship for smuggling people out of Brazil. In addition to work on eliminating hunger in Brazil, Frei Betto is involved in Brazilian politics. He worked for the government of President Lula da Silva as an advisor on prison policy and child hunger. This is his first novel.Jethro Soutar: Jethro Soutar, born in Sheffield, lives in London and has recently published two works of non-fiction,'Ronaldinho: Football's Flamboyant Maestro' and a part biography, part chronicle of a film movement, entitled'Gael García Bernal and the Latin American New Wave', published in July 2008. Soutar translated Needle in a Haystack by Ernesto Mallo for Bitter Lemon Press.