Smaller and Smaller Circles by F.H. Batacan

Jesuit priest Gus Saenz and Jerome Lucero perform forensic work to solve the mystery around the murders of young boys in a poor region of Payatas.

Smaller and Smaller Circles is a detective novel, a very intelligent one. It won the Carlos Palanca Grand Prize for the English Novel in 1999, which was what made me buy it in the first place.

When I started reading it, I found it boring but as I went through more pages, I just can't stop reading. The plot is really good and gets better as you go. I was so into it that there came a moment when I thought something bad would happen to the protagonist so I left few pages unread for a while before finally finishing it.