THE NOVEL DETECTIVE

A woman returns to Havana in 2020 to investigate two deaths written off as suicides 40 years earlier.

Teresa, a New Mexico mystery writer who’s always wanted to be a detective, is still haunted by her life as a teen in Havana. A call from her childhood friend Estrella, a Miami DJ whom she hasn’t seen in years, provides the impetus for the two of them to go back to Havana to investigate the deaths of their classmate Yoyi and Felipe, their English teacher, whom Yoyi had been sleeping with. Felipe allegedly threw himself from a window, and a devastated Yoyi supposedly poisoned herself. The story switches back and forth between the present-day investigation and the past, when neither of the friends told the truth about what happened that day. Teresita was a model student who lived with her mother, Cristina, a pharmacist, and her grandmother. Her father had left Cuba on a raft for a life in New Mexico. The much more attractive Estrella was free-spirited and uninhibited despite her strict mother. She hung out with Teresita as a cover for her wilder impulses. Teresita discovered the destination of the pills that had gone missing from her mother’s pharmacy but kept quiet to protect the family. After the deaths of Yoyi and Felipe, Teresita had a nervous breakdown, and her mother took advantage of the Mariel boatlift to get them both out of Cuba. The friends begin their present-day investigation in a rented apartment but move to a hotel in the building that once housed their school, and that’s where things heat up.

A fascinating look at life in Cuba cleverly intertwined with a series of puzzles the protagonist is desperate to solve.