Brazilian writer Patricia Melo follows up her impressive debut novel The Killer(winner of the French Prix Deux Oceans, 1996 and the German Deutcher Krimi Preis in 1998) with another unusual crime thriller In Praise of Lies. While The Killer sets a bang-bang pace, this murder is meticulous, slow and fanged. Pulp crime writer Jose falls for Melissa while researching snake venom as a weapon at the serological institute where she works. She enlists him and his plots to help kill her husband, Ronald. This puts Jose off his stride and his book outlines to his publisher, which pilfer from Camus, Poe and Dostoevsky, become more obtuse, witty and hopelessly non-commercial. The snake chosen for the task is so lethargic that Jose muses: "It's not for nothing that killers prefer to settle the matter with automatics." Ronald refuses to die easily. Jose then switches to authoring self-help manuals and becomes a bestselling guru, instructing people how to live, while Melissa keeps telling him how to kill. Melo has enormous fun with her pastiche of current publishing trends, right down to anticipating the success of titles like The Little Book of Calm. Self-love affirmations are dangerous to a murderer.--Cherry Smyth