pinoy detective fiction

Smaller and Smaller Circles by FH Batacan
Published by the University of the Philippines Press, 2003.

The body count had reached six before the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) sought the services of two Jesuit priests: forensic anthropologist Gus Saenz, to examine the victims' corpses, C.S.I. style; and clinical psychologist Jerome Lucero, to build the killer's profile to hasten the manhunt.

Six teenage boys found dead at the Payatas area had their faces, genitals and internal organs removed. In Saenz's comfy hi-tech lab in Ateneo, the evidence point to the same knife used on the victims, each of whom died on the first Saturday of the month.

The tidy knife job and corpse dumping suggest meticulousness and skill. The consistent date of death, a ritual; something with which to start the month right.

A serial killer is on the prowl, which the NBI can't begin to admit, and can't fathom how to track down.

This is because, Batacan writes, "Little attention is paid to determining patterns: a missing persons' physical type or age, the geographical area in which he or she disappeared or reappeared, the condition in which he or she has been found."

This leads to the prevalent myth that there are no serial killers in the country, even though serial killing, she writes, "is not a solely Western phenomenon...and that the inadequacy and sloppiness of local police methods and intelligence techniques stand in the way of its detection."

In short, no one is watching, except, in this case, two men of the cloth "with no staff, limited resources and often, no official authority, performing the kind of investigative work that very few people in the country--and civilians at that--are capable of doing."

This is an excerpt from my review of Smaller and Smaller Circles. It's an unexpected good-enough read. For a teaser review, click here and here. Try to read the teasers first, because mine gives everything away: judgmental synopsis and all.

The development, or the chase (which is painstakingly slow), is seen through the lives of the characters: the sleuths (two Jesuit priests--recall Umberto Echo's 'In the Name of the Rose'), the victims' mothers, the reporter hot on the serial-murder-scoop and her adopted father/segment producer); the National Bureau of Investigation agent; and of course that of the killer himself (who is from UP Manila--could this be a hint that the freedom to improve is the self-same freedom to degenerate?).

Two things slow down the story's pace. One is the telling of the characters' back stories. Another is the series of lectures on forensic investigation: how date of death is approximated, inferences on weapon type and killer profile based on depth of cuts, manner of mutilation, and so on. Remember, this was written some five years before C.S.I. made it here through cable TV. The book's concept was original at the time; probably why it won the grand prize in the Palanca awards.

Don't expect tense dark alley chases or gun-point drama. The priests are not deputized to make arrests, they carry no guns, and they are relying on their own resources (forensic equipment, air fare, unofficial intelligence sources, etc.--good thing they're Ateneans, they can afford it). One subtle message in the book is that professional forensic-detective work leading to an arrest, in this country, is nearly a miracle. Probably why priests are the detectives--they are morally untainted, at least compared to cops; and they answer to a higher morality, at least as far as their image goes. The ending, where the killer is bullet-holed, and one of the priests offers himself as a killer-negotiator (and nearly gets martyred), is a comforting closure. Justice was not to be served by human courts (a tainted extension of the police), but by heaven. The killer's psyche was too damaged by teenage trauma to do otherwise--his shrewdness evolved out of an inability to cope with the pain. This is his salvation.

The pace of the investigation felt realistic. The book detailed the causes of delay--the NBI investigator wanted to hog media attention; and there was no national database of committed crimes and missing persons, where one could compare and cross-reference cases, and see patterns. This accumulates into: if this is how slow justice comes, we need a miracle; hence the priestly interference. It was as if God was forced to do something.