A MIRACLE IN PARADISE

Something funny is going on among the Order of the Illumination of the Sacred Virgin. The order, transplanted from Yugoslavia to Miami, has already reported two miraculous healings, and now they’ve announced a third that hasn’t even happened yet. On the morning of October 3, according to their toll-free hot line (1-800-MIRACLE, or 1-800-MILAGRO for Spanish speakers), the statue of the Virgen de la Caridad will weep real tears in her shrine at Coconut Grove. The Mother Superior of the neighboring Order of the Holy Rosary, not one to take this sort of thing lying down, asks Sister Lourdes Solano to bring her sister Lupe Solano onto the case, remaining careful to build a firewall of deniability between herself and her shamus, and Lupe’s most intriguing case is off with a bang. The only problem is that it’s practically impossible to get an earful of what’s going on inside the Order of the Illumination (Lupe’s attempt to pass herself off as a postulant comes to nothing), and the few leads who have any knowledge of the order—an archdiocesan gardener, a nun from Massachusetts and her triplet brother’soon come to grief. Sadly, do does the story, dragged down by an unexpectedly skittish client, a disappointing killer, and a frustratingly inconclusive conclusion. Along the way, though, Lupe (Bloody Shame, 1997, etc.) folds a tense anti-Castro subplot and some disturbingly manipulative sex into a tale whose ending couldn’t possibly have satisfied everybody.