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This paper analyzes O Crime do Cais do Valongo by Eliana Alves Cruz, demonstrating that the novel is not merely a detective story but a historical and social commentary on the realities of nineteenth-century slavery in Brazil. Set in early 19th-century Rio de Janeiro, the story revolves around the investigation of the murder of Bernardo Lourenço Vianna, a businessman and slave trader, in the port district of Valongo. While the investigation is led by the Intendente-Geral da Polícia and his assistant Nuno, the narrative deviates from conventional detective fiction, lacking logical deduction and structured mystery-solving. Though three enslaved individuals confess to the crime, they were only involved in the desecration of the corpse. The true perpetrator—a white aristocrat—is revealed only through a vision experienced by Muana, one of the enslaved characters, in her spiritual form. Their desecration of Bernardo’s corpse is an act of symbolic revenge against years of abuse. The novel highlights the historical significance of Valongo, one of the most important slave landing sites in the Americas, where countless African captives suffered and perished. It argues that the real crime of the Cais do Valongo is not the murder at the center of the plot, but slavery itself—the institutionalized system of violence, exploitation, and dehumanization imposed by the Portuguese Empire on its Brazilian colony, and later continued by independent Brazil until the abolition of slavery in 1888. By framing slavery as the true crime, the novel denounces not only individual acts of brutality but also the legal and colonial structures that sustained them. It serves as an effort to reclaim the memory of slavery and confront Brazil’s historical amnesia. Additionally, the story integrates Bantu cosmology, in which the spirits of the dead coexist with the living. Through the perspective of Muana, an enslaved woman, the novel emphasizes the importance of allowing the victims of the slave trade to return to their ancestral realm—a symbolic reparation that transcends the material world. Furthermore, the novel may also be read as a critique of the epistemological framework of Western-centrism, which absolutizes rationalism while excluding non-Western traditions and systems of value. Ultimately, the paper asserts that while the novel adopts the form of detective fiction, its true purpose is to expose the history of slavery, not to solve a crime. Cruz uses this literary framework to fill the gaps in Brazil’s historical narrative, shedding light on history from the perspective of the oppressed rather than the colonizers.