GRINGA is set in Sao Paulo, where Mario Leme, a detective in the Policia Civil, has developed a friendship with a young English investigative journalist called Ellie: they watch one another's backs, she gives him leads, and he gives her stories. When she goes to meet a contact on the outskirts of the favela, Mario observes from the street as she walks into a building - and never comes out. Inside, he discovers the dead body of a young man he doesn't recognise, and Ellie's phone lying on the floor... Told partly from Mario's point of view, partly from Ellie's, Gringa takes us through the Sao Paulo over the course of five days at the end of 2012, during the redevelopment of the centre of Sao Paulo in the run-up to the 2014 World Cup as Ellie's disappearance links characters at every level of the social hierarchy, from the drug dealers and civil police to the political class. Gringa, with shades of Don Winslow and James Ellroy is a portrait of a city at an extraordinary moment in its history.

Author Biography

Joe Thomas is the author of Paradise City and Gringa. The third part in his Sao Paulo quartet, Playboy, will be published in September 2019, and the final part, Brazilian Psycho, in 2020. He teaches English and Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. Prior to this, Joe lived and taught in Sao Paulo for ten years.