CALYPSO, CORPSES, AND COOKING

A food anthropologist stirs a messy pot of murder.

After earning her doctorate in New York studying the foodways of the Caribbean, Miriam Quiñones is happy to be back in her hometown of Miami, though the gated enclave of Coral Shores has little in common with the Cuban community where she grew up. But much as she misses the sights, sounds, and colors of Hialeah, she enjoys the sense of security Coral Shores affords her husband, Robert, her preschooler, Manny, and the new little arrival she expects in May. So she’s more than a little disconcerted to find the words HELP MURDER scrawled on the side of her house. More disconcerting yet is finding socialite Lois Pimpkin the next day lying in Miriam’s front yard with a severe wound to the head. A few days later, Miriam has a front-row seat when Sebi Malkov, chef at the Coral Shores Country Club, takes a header off the second-floor balcony and dies. By now, Hialeah is looking pretty tame. Between prepping for her two cooking shows—Cocina Caribeña on UnMundo and Abuela Approved on YouTube—and doing advance work for the charity gala her snooty mother-in-law roped her into, Miriam has no time to investigate. But as the corpses pile up, she feels she must, if only to restore the sense of peace and security her growing family deserves. A mind-boggling combination of Byzantine motives and oddball coincidences is required to solve this one.

Reyes serves up a variety of Caribbean treats that maybe should not all be on the same plate.