Synopses & Reviews
Chapter One
These idle thoughts flitted through my mind as I looked out the car window at the familiar scenery of Miami. Alvaro Mendoza, my current love interest, was driving, and we were heading north on Granada Boulevard toward the Biltmore Hotel to attend my niece Marianna's wedding reception.
Alvaro was actually more than just a passing liaison. He and I had been together for almost a year now, a record of sorts for me. And, another first, he was Cuban, the first Latino man I had ever been seriously involved with -- Latino being the current fashionable word to refer to us Hispanics. One night I actually sat at the dinner table with my sister Fatima's twelve-year-old twins and concocted different possible terms that might be used in the future to refer to those of us who lived in the New World but had Spanish origins.
We came up with "peoplissimos, taninos, sÍ personas, and a few other ridiculous variations on the same theme.
The drive from my home in Cocoplum to the hotel wasn't long -- fifteen minutes the way Alvaro drove, seven if I had been behind the wheel. But it felt like an eternity, It had been a long time since I wore a long dress, and I was alternating between fits of pain and numbness. Ominously, I hadn't been tested by having to stand up for more than a couple of minutes at a time.
It was a triumph. The only problem was that the Austrian designer hadn't created the dress to be worn by a thirty year-old Cuban woman who had a weakness for chocolate and a backslider's approach to exercise. Although I hatedto admit it, perhaps I had relaxed a little during my time with Alvaro and put on a couple of pounds. Alvaro said he liked me sexy and voluptuous, and he was always trying to get me to eat seconds when we had dinner together. So far I hadn't resisted his entreaties.
Achieving my look that night hadn't been easy. Nighttime assaults on beachheads seldom are. Colin Powell spent less time getting ready for the Gulf War than I had preparing for this wedding. At society gatherings such as this I always wanted to look my best. It was a matter of self-esteem, not to mention my professional standing. I knew the Cuban women there would be scrutinizing me like a jeweler looking for imperfections in a stone, searching for evidence that I was letting myself go and that my sleazy profession was catching up with me. My complicated personal life had given them plenty to talk about over the years; I sure as hell didn't intend to add to the rumor mill by showing up looking less than stunning, or as though my chosen lifestyle had taken its toll on my appearance.
My ensemble that night had been the result of a team effort -- and Aida, our housekeeper, deserved special commendation. Her great achievement had been to close up my dress without embedding any of my epidermis in the zipper's teeth, no small feat for an octogenarian. There had also been a valiant young saleslady at the Saks Fifth Avenue lingerie department, who hadn't lost heart when she heard me yelling, cursing, and grunting in the dressing room trying to fit into my corset. Instead, she leaped into the fray, helping me wedge my way in, then stuffing my ample breasts into the cups. The price I paid for beauty. I hated to be reined in,physically or otherwise.
Alvaro was quiet, concentrating on his driving. The winding streets of Coral Gables were notoriously badly lit. The residents apparently liked it that way, because every proposal to add more streelights was inevitably voted down. The unspoken understanding was that no one wanted non-residents to be able to find their way around.
We pulled...
Synopsis
Feisty, fiery Cuban-American p.i. Lupe Solano knows her way in and out of every tight corner of her tropical Miami home -- from the opulent watering holes of Miami Beach to the colorful back streets of Little Havana to seedy, dangerous dives no self-respecting individual would be caught dead in. But now things are about to get hotter for Lupe than they have ever gotten before.
Havana Heat
Poured into her tightest dress, and balancing on her highest heels, Lupe merely wants to make the best impression possible at the wedding of her niece to a scion of the ultra-wealthy Miranda family. But she finds it impossible to leave her business back in the office when she is accosted by the groom's overbearing Aunt Lucia, and tantalized by an incredible tale of a lost, five centuries-old masterpiece -- the legendary Eighth Unicorn Tapestry -- that the rich tia claims is locked away in a secret underground vault beneath the family home. The only trouble is, the mansion in question is back in Havana. And Aunt Lucia has decided that Lupe should be the one to finally return the tapestry to its rightful owners.
Besides the large potential payday, Lupe Solano has her own personal reasons -- not necessarily good ones -- for agreeing to transform herself from a less-than-typical Florida investigator into a brazen art smuggler. But before she sets off on a trail that will lead Lupe across the treacherous Florida straits into the heart of Havana, a rather shady business contact turns up dead in his bed, strangled with a pair of pantyhose. After a second murder occurs, Lupe's ready to start looking for connections between the two local homicides and her covert art-rescue mission. Because it's beginning to look as if her life depends upon her making them.
Once again, acclaimed author Carolina Garcia-Aguilera has captured the heart and soul of Miami's Cuban-American community in her fiction. Readers who have already enjoyed her previous novels will cheer the return of Lupe Solano, investigator without peer, in her most exciting, surprising, and colorful adventure to date. For those new to the series, Havana Heat is the ideal place to discover the intrepid investigator whom critics across the nation have placed among mystery's "freshest," "most interesting," "most formidable protagonists."
About the Author
Carolina Garcia-Aguilera was born in Havana, Cuba, and her family emigrated to the United States one year after Fidel Castro took power. A former licensed detective in Miami, handling both civil and criminal cases, Carolina decided, after more than ten years in the business, that she would much prefer writing detective stories to living them. She now makes her home in South Beach. Carolina is the author of three previous Lupe Solano mystery novels.