F.H. Batacan

This harrowing mystery, winner of the Philippine National Book Award, follows two Catholic priests on the hunt through Manila for a brutal serial killer Payatas, a 50-acre dump northeast of Manila’s Quezon City, is home to thousands of people who live off of what they can scavenge there. It is one of the poorest neighborhoods in a city whose law enforcement is already stretched thin, devoid of forensic resources and rife with corruption. So when the eviscerated bodies of preteen boys begin to appear in the dump heaps, there is no one to seek justice on their behalf. In the rainy summer of 1997, two Jesuit priests take the matter of protecting their flock into their own hands. Father Gus Saenz is a respected forensic anthropologist, one of the few in the Philippines, and has been tapped by the Director of the National Bureau of Investigations as a backup for police efforts. Together with his protégé, Father Jerome Lucero, a psychologist, Saenz dedicates himself to tracking down the monster preying on these impoverished boys. Smaller and Smaller Circles, widely regarded as the first Filipino crime novel, is a poetic masterpiece of literary noir, a sensitive depiction of a time and place, and a fascinating story about the Catholic Church and its place in its devotees’ lives.

Smaller and Smaller Circles

A short story collection as relentlessly intense and darkly compelling as Batacan’s debut, the Filipino crime landmark Smaller and Smaller Circles

F.H. Batacan’s first novel, Smaller and Smaller Circles , was an instant classic when it was published in 1999, a masterpiece of Filipino crime that won the Philippine Book Award. In this, her second work of fiction, she gives us a far-ranging collection that explores the darkest corners of human experience, depicting with pitch black humor the systems of class and politics that her characters are trapped in, and the moments violence—accidental or otherwise—that can, at any moment, shatter their lives.

The driver for a wealthy family witnesses the aftermath of the disappearance of the family’s twelve-year-old son. A field investigator for the World Health Organization travels the world giving presentations about a biomedical enzyme that will lead to the extinction of the human race. And Father Augusto Saenz, the Jesuit priest and forensic anthropologist from Smaller and Smaller Circles , returns to investigate the murder of a woman whose secretive life holds the key to her death.

Sure to cement Batacan’s status as a crime writer of global status, Accidents Happen is a probing and relentless series of dark excursions into worlds where the smallest moments are infused with life and vibrating with menace, and death is always close at hand.

Accidents Happen and Other Stories

This harrowing mystery, winner of the Philippine National Book Award, follows two Catholic priests on the hunt through Manila for a brutal serial killer

Payatas, a 50-acre dump northeast of Manila’s Quezon City, is home to thousands of people who live off of what they can scavenge there. It is one of the poorest neighborhoods in a city whose law enforcement is already stretched thin, devoid of forensic resources and rife with corruption. So when the eviscerated bodies of preteen boys begin to appear in the dump heaps, there is no one to seek justice on their behalf.

In the rainy summer of 1997, two Jesuit priests take the matter of protecting their flock into their own hands. Father Gus Saenz is a respected forensic anthropologist, one of the few in the Philippines, and has been tapped by the Director of the National Bureau of Investigations as a backup for police efforts. Together with his protégé, Father Jerome Lucero, a psychologist, Saenz dedicates himself to tracking down the monster preying on these impoverished boys.

Smaller and Smaller Circles, widely regarded as the first Filipino crime novel, is a poetic masterpiece of literary noir, a sensitive depiction of a time and place, and a fascinating story about the Catholic Church and its place in its devotees’ lives.

F.H. Batacan

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