The judges' weapon

Almost 20 years after the publication of Adeus, Princesa (perhaps Clara Pinto Correia's greatest success, which Jorge Paixão da Costa adapted for cinema), the author brought the protagonists of that book, the characters of Bárbara Emília, Joaquim Peixoto, and Sebastião Curto, to the outskirts of Lisbon in the present day. The writer's new book (and biologist, and university professor, and contributor to Visão magazine, and author of television programs), the 34th in her bibliography, is set in the suburbs of a city that has grown disorderly, full of buildings that look more like boxes or cages to which one returns after a day's work, to spend the night staring at another box, the television, in a society where people cannot be happy or even dream of happiness anymore, and turn to medication as the easiest escape from a life they do not know how, or cannot, build. As CPC said in an interview with JL (6.3.02): "If with 'Adeus, Princesa' the social backdrop was the beginning of the communist dream crumbling in Alentejo, now it will be the degradation of people's quality of life and the complete degeneration of all senses." And she adds: "(With this book, I hope) to make people think about things they tend to overlook." "A Arma dos Juízes" is at once a police thriller, where an investigation is ongoing, where corruption and influence peddling are discussed, written in a lively and colloquial tone.