SHANGO

Intriguing first novel about an Afro-Caribbean religion, by the author of The Cuban-American Experience and The Mexican Border Cities (not reviewed). Miami homicide's Lt. Osvaldo GutiÇrrez, a class act as a detective, comes into two cases of similar ceremonial murder, pointing to the Santer°a—a cult that usually practices white magic and sympathetic (homeopathic) magic. But these particular murders, involving iron pots filled with magnets, goat blood, and railroad spikes, along with the placing of a decapitated head stolen from a graveyard, suggest otherwise. GutiÇrrez is fairly knowledgeable about such practices but consults the expert on them, Professor Henry J. Krajewski, author of Santer°a in Cuba: Persistence and Change in an Afro-Cuban Religion. Krajewski is helpful as he meanwhile also sends his Cuban-American grad student, Miguel Calder¢n, to see professor Rosa Garc°a-Mesa, herself an expert on Santer°a, since that is Miguel's current interest toward his thesis. Rosa shows Miguel her special holy room, chockablock with Santer°a relics favoring her chosen god, Shang¢, the terrible trickster masculine sex-god. Later, while visiting a bot†nica where cult items are sold by the towering 300-pound giant Hern†n, Miguel meets and falls in love with the gorgeous Ileana. A third murder occurs with the ritual death of Candyman, a minor drug dealer. When we discover that Krajewski and Rosa once had a child together in Cuba, that the child died, and that Ileana later was named after her, the story thickens, with either Ileana or Miguel seemingly set up to be the new ritual victim. The two—can't imagine why—decide to work with Lt. GutiÇrrez to thwart the plot. Neatly told, nice love interest, fairly mild melodrama, and rich backgrounds on occult and voodoo practices.