A Samba for Sherlock.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara
• Position: Review

A Samba for Sherlock [O Xango de Baker Street], by Jo Soares. Trans., Clifford E. Landers. New York: Vintage International, 1998.

If you think you know Sherlock Holmes, think again. Brazilian writer J6 Soares recasts Conan Doyle's reserved, pipe-smoking detective as a bungler in the tropics. Set in Rio de Janeiro in 1886, the stow revolves around the theft of a Stradivarius violin and a series of murders. The emperor Dom Pedro has given the valuable instrument to his favorite mistress; Maria Luisa. Shortly after it disappears, a mysterious killer begins to prey on young women. The corpses of his victims--a common prostitute, a lady-in waiting, a charity worker, and finally, Maria Luisa herself--all bear two common marks: first, a violin string tied among their pubic hairs and second, a missing flap of skin. Long before anyone suspects the connection between the theft and the murders, Dom Pedro calls in the famous English sleuth to track down the violin. Fortuitously, the sleuth's stay in Rio coincides with the visit of the magnificent Sarah Bernhardt, who is on tour in South America.

Accompanied by his inseparable sidekick, Dr. Watson, Sherlock arrives in sunny Rio dressed in heavy English woolens. Much of the humor of the book derives from the clash between the reader's mental image of the traditional Holmes--astute, decorous, and in control--and this out-of-place, blundering Englishman. Soares's Sherlock constantly uses his observational and deductive powers to reach brilliant but totally incorrect conclusions. Just off the boat, he takes one look at a young man with a stained coat and determines that the youth's brother died of tuberculosis a short time ago; as it turns out, the youth is an only child and the origin of the stains is quite different from what Holmes assumed. An inveterate braggart, the bumbling sleuth constantly crows of his exploits and talks down to his Brazilian assistants; when they catch him in an error, rather than admit his fallibility, he asserts that he knew the right answer all along and was just testing them. Furthermore, he's not above lying to get out of a jam.

Humor is what drives this novel. In one hilarious episode, Sherlock pulls a thread from a window sill and stares at it intently. The reader assumes he has found an important clue, but in reality, he is observing his injured thumb. Sometimes the buffoonery turns macabre. In one episode the coroner has just removed a young victim's liver when her father...