Bloody Secrets (Lupe Solano Mysteries)

As a 35 year resident of Miami and a Private Investigator, I found Bloody Secrets to be both great fun and very accurate. The author captures the essence of a truly magic city and its inhabitants. It is a excellent entertainment value. I have read the two previous Lupe Solano books and have particularily enjoyed the maturing that Ms. Garcia-Aguilera has demonstrated as a writer. I look forward to reading her latest works.

This is my first time reading 1/a contemporary, first-person P.I. story and 2/a Lupe Solano story.While I appreciated what the author was trying to convey with the history in Part I, it was basically reportage rather than engaging fiction that makes you want to stay up late and keep reading. However,once Lupe appears, the story really starts to take shape. It's a fun, quick read, and I was surprised how wrapped up I got in trying to figure out how things would turn out in the end. I recommend it and will read her other stories to see how she has grown as a writer.I appreciate the minimal use of profanity and sex. I liked the insight into the Cuban community and history and culture.Perhaps it's standard structure for this genre, but I didn't like the action being stopped in order to spoon-feed the reader a multi-paragraph biography each time a new character appeared.

Bloody Secrets, the third book in the Miami PI Lupe Solano series, is not quite up to Garcia-Aguilera's high standards. The setting was, as usual, superb, but the plot was thinner than in the previous two novels. The author used the word "honor" so much that it lost its meaning. The relationship between Luis and Lupe was never fully developed, and her attraction to him leaves a reader wondering, "Where did this come from?" However, the relationship between Lupe and her assistant continues to grow and evolve. Worth reading, but the first two books (Bloody Waters and Bloody Shame) are superior reads.

I had the "perpetrator" figured out about halfway through the book, and was disappointed in the ending. I loved her first two books and kept checking on the release date of this book so I would be sure to order it. I don't know if it was just me, but I thought that Lupe was a little slow figuring this one out. Luis was too good to be true, in my opinion, and I found myself talking outloud to the book, trying to warn Lupe to watch out. I knew what she was going to find when she finally found Mike's camera and I said to myself, "Finally!!" Anyway, I'm not completely disappointed - it was still a good book. I'll be looking forward to her next book, hopefully another "Lupe Solano" novel.

Cuban Luis Delgado wants to hire Miami private investigator Lupe Solano to investigate the eminent de la Torre family. Luis insists that the family patriarch swindled his father out of a fortune back in 1958 when both tried to flee Batista's Cuba and the onset of the Castro revolution. Luis' father went to prison where he died while de la Torre went on the becoming a popular patron of the South Florida arts. Lupe finds herself attracted to Luis, who recently escaped from Cuba. In spite of her normal policy of rejecting off the street cases, she agrees to conduct an investigation. Soon, the straight forward case turns nasty as seemingly innocent people are killed. Revenge within the Cuban-American community seems to be the order of the day and if Lupe is not careful she could be its next victim. The third Lupe Solano novel continues to have the freshness that made its two predecessors (BLOODY WATERS and BLOOSY SHAME) remarkably insightful and compelling novels. The story line, built around the exiled Cuban community is superb and loaded with action and insight into the exile culture. Lupe remains a top rate private investigator who despite her human fralities always gets the job done.. However, it is late 1950's Havana and modern South Beach and the remaining surrounding South Florida Cuban communities that turn Carolina Garcia-Aguilera's novel into a delightful reading experience. Harriet Klausner