This must be the one book that the Brazil Department of Tourism hopes will forever be a flop. A young man of the streets in Sao Paolo senselessly and brutally commits his first murder, and then quickly gravitates to more killing. The reaction he gets from his neighbors is astounding to not only himself but also to the reader, but upon reflection it is understandable. There are probably lots of big messages here, but what I take out of this is a bit more mundane - there are a lot of crazies out there, and that guy that just cut you off or who jumped in front of you at the movie line could be one of them, someone who would give little thought to killing you in the next 60 seconds. It's a downer of a book, intriguing, I was glad to finish it. I think there's a lot of the world I'll see before heading to certain places in Brazil and South Africa (see my review of Random Violence). ( )