Gringa

Gringa is a novel that follows the story of Mario Leme, a detective in the civil police, and Ellie, a young English investigative journalist, as they investigate the disappearance of a young man in central São Paulo. The novel is set against the backdrop of the redevelopment of the city in the run-up to the 2014 World Cup and explores the harshness, dysfunction, corruption, and social divisions of São Paulo.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 288 pages
Publication date: 18 August 2022
Publisher: Quercus Publishing

As vibrant, colorful, and complex as South America's largest city, São Paulo, 2013: a city at an extraordinary moment in its history.

Mario Leme, a detective in the civil police, has developed a friendship with a young English investigative journalist, Ellie. When she goes to meet a contact in central São Paulo, Mario observes from the street as she walks into a building and doesn't come out. Inside, he discovers the dead body of a young man he doesn't recognize, and Ellie's phone lying on the floor.

Told partly from Leme's point of view, partly from Ellie's, Gringa takes us through five days during the redevelopment of the center of Sao Paulo in the run-up to the 2014 World Cup. Ellie's disappearance links characters at every level of the social hierarchy, from the drug dealers and civil and military police to the political class she witnesses the feral brutality of urban breakdown.

Gringa, with shades of Don Winslow and James Ellroy, is a portrait of São Paulo in all its harshness and dysfunction, its corruption and social divisions, its kaleidoscopic dynamism, its undercurrent of derangement, and its febrile, sensual instability, executed with a deep knowledge of the city's architecture and culture.

PRAISE FOR JOE THOMAS

Brilliant
The Times
Feverish energy
Guardian
Wonderfully vivid
Mail on Sunday
Sophisticated, dizzying
GQ
Vivid and visceral
The Times
Superbly realized vivid and atmospheric
Guardian
Original
Mail on Sunday
A stylish, atmospheric treat an inspired blend of David Peace and early Pinter
Irish Times
Sparse, energetic, fragmented prose
The Spectator
Vibrant, colorful, and complex
Irish Independent
Stylish, sharp-witted, taut. A must for modern noir fans
NB Magazine
Definitive confident and compelling

Weight: 202g
Dimension: 128 x 197 x 24 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781529426601