Rated FIVE stars *****

This first-person detective novel about private investigator Lupe Solano, set in Miami sometime after the Elian Gonzales affair, is a wonderful woman's FANTASY!! I came across this book because I was specifically looking for books with WOMEN as the private investigators. The exotic setting also attracted me. This book has far exceeded my expectations - so much so, that I anticipate reading the book again and again.

I LOVED this book. Lupe is a bright, intelligent young woman out of the Cuban community in Miami, who has become a private investigator, much to the chagrin of her conservative Cuban family. The character is single, either late 20's or early 30's. She tools around in a Mercedes, conducts half her meetings in lavish restaurants, and has dashingly handsome men coming in and out of her life like a revolving door! This is what I mean by the book being a woman's fantasy. This lightens up the book compared to other, male private investigator books. It was a nice change from the PI books where the main character is barely making ends meet, and always dealing with one scruffy person after another.

I enjoy exotic settings and foreign cultures, and that made this book doubly enjoyable for me. I learned a lot about the Cuban community in south Florida, and was quite favorably impressed! I also learned about what it was like for the Cuban exiles before, during, and after they left Cuba, as well as how and why they left.

Lupe investigates a double-homicide with all sorts of interesting characters. But she does it all in STYLE. This book is definitely NOT a thriller, in terms of not being able to put it down. It's a book to be read leisurely, and savored, page by page, just like a fine wine.

Every one of this author's books, all mysteries, are set in the Cuban-immigrant subculture in the United States, whether they are in Miami or Las Vegas. This is one of my all-time favorite authors.

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