There are no heroes in Igna cio de Loyola Branda o’s world, only victims: not only of violence, but of deceit, desire, and fear. In The Good-Bye Angel, Branda o returns to his great subject: the tyranny of the community versus the individual, the city versus its inhabitants. Large enough to develop its own mythology, yet small enough to be provincial and petty, the city of Arealva (standing in for Brazil, and the world at large) is itself a character in Branda o’s latest novel, toying with and finally consuming its citizens with the innocent cruelty of a cat with its prey–it’s nothing personal, but it needs the meat. A cross between a film noir and a Greek tragedy, with more than its share of sex and drugs (though no rock ‘n’ roll), The Good-Bye Angel begins with a murder and ends in a panorama of ambition, obsession, libido, hypocrisy, and loneliness.