There's something very worrying about a free lunch: It could be provided with a dangerous ulterior motive.
That's what Cuban-born Mercedes Spivey and her American professor husband ignore for far too long, when the couple receives a free pair of cruise tickets to the Spanish-speaking island that each one needs to revisit, for a different reason. Sweepstake winning? Accidental lottery reward? Who knows -- but the timing is so perfect that they don't question it, and jump onto a cruise boat, ready to enjoy the ride.
Within the first minutes on the cruise on the Narwhal, Mercedes spots someone from her own past ... and then perhaps a glimpse of a second person. It's a creepy coincidence, right? A chance to make things better with people she'd cut in the past?
Teresa Dovalpage's previous Cuban mysteries are much sweeter than DEATH UNDER THE PERSEIDS, because this time we know right from the start — since Mercedes is sharing her viewpoint all along — that this "pretty woman" with her older husband has a lot to feel guilty about, and a lot left unresolved, as she's climbed her way, one affair at a time, to some sort of Floridian middle class. Soon it looks like she's surrounded by others with mixed motives. (Maybe the only truly nice person is her aging grandmother who still does the laundry by hand in the back yard of her Havana home.)
Mercedes begs us, as readers and witnesses, to believe there is one saint in her life: Lorenzo, whom she loved and left, and who then died in a fire. (Fire and blades and other threats abound!) Meanwhile, if she's the chief sinner here, are all the threats deserved? Does she still have the ability to dodge and weave, and come out ahead? Even as she disembarks in Havana, she's questioning her safety:
Two men approached the counter. One was a skinny, gray-bearded guy in a tie-dyed shirt who looked like a hippie—or at least my idea of what a hippie was. He went first. The other, who walked with a slight limp, carried a burgundy European Union passport. Our eyes met for a second, and I couldn't shake the feeling that I had seen him before. Maybe the other guy too. They both seemed sort of familiar. My throat closed and my heart pounded faster.
Dovalpage takes quite a risk herself, in presenting such an unpleasant protagonist, whose greed and self-centeredness are not really balanced by her endless chest-thumping guilt. Yet the net of threats and complications and the Cuban setting pull the story faster and faster, until it can't be set aside: The Perseids, the meteor shower that's taking place as revelations cascade, is that too somehow a message to Mercedes that her own crimes are known and she's about to lose at last?
DEATH UNDER THE PERSEIDS is much darker than Dovalpage's three earlier mysteries. Whether you collect it for the Cuban setting or for the ongoing suspense of how this maturing author will continue to develop, it's a must for the shelf. Kudos to Soho Crime (an imprint of Soho Press) for encouraging Dovalpage to move forward so fiercely.
PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.
No comments:
Post a Comment