WEARY of study, I returned to my hotel room, ready for my nap. Then my eye chanced upon a book, lying unopened since friends had pressed it upon me, urging me to read. Idly, I picked it up. At 150 pages it didn’t seem much of a challenge. It said on the back cover that the book had received literary awards. So I opened it. And then I was hooked. Smaller and Smaller Circles , by Filipino author FH Batacan, is about two Jesuit priests-cum-detectives, who investigate a series of murders of undersized, undernourished teenage boys in a slum suburb of Quezon, the Philippines’ largest city. The story opens with the discovery of the dead body of a boy dumped in the Payatas area of the city. The body has been mutilated and eviscerated. The two priests, Father Gus and Father Jerome, set about their investigation as the number of the victims rises, eventually to six. All the victims are killed and mutilated in the same way. I shift my weight on the chair and continue to read, alm