Carolina Garcia-Aguilera: Bloody Secrets (USA 1999)

From the Publisher:
In Bloody Secrets, Lupe Solano returns to work the case of a balsero - a refugee who escaped Cuba by raft. Although Lupe doesn't accept clients without a reference, she is intrigued by Luis's story: a drifter living in a flophouse in a dangerous neighborhood, he claims that one of Miami's prominent Cuban couples has swindled his family out of their fortune and arranged for his murder. Lupe is instantly drawn to Luis, who appears to be more interested in his family's honor than in the money that is rightfully his. She finds that she can't push him from her mind - brought up by a once aristocratic mother whose husband died in Castro's prison, he is the sort of man she might have ended up with had her family not succeeded in leaving Cuba in the first wave of immigration in the 1960s. But Luis's case is far more complicated than Lupe anticipates, when innocent people are killed, and when she finds that her feelings for her client are more than professional.

Carolina Garcia-Aguilera: Bloody Secrets. A Lupe Solano Mystery. Berkley Publishing Group, ISBN: 0425167798 (March, 1999), 324 p., $6.50.

Carolina Garcia-Aguilera: Bloody Secrets (USA 1998)

From the Publisher:
Miami P.I. Lupe Solano has been called "funny, sexy, and Miami-smart" by Nelson DeMille, and "an absolute joy" by The Miami Herald. Now the celebrated sleuth returns.

In a sweeping story that takes readers from the last days of Batista's Havana, to the Guantanamo Bay refugee camp, to Miami's high society, Lupe takes the case of a balsero-a refugee who escaped Cuba by raft. Luis is a drifter living in a flophouse, but he claims Miami's most prominent Cuban couple has robbed his family and arranged for his murder. Lupe is instantly drawn to Luis, and his sense of honor. But the case becomes troubling when innocent people are killed and when her feelings for her client become more than professional. A page-turning mystery, a remarkable glimpse into the lives of all strata of Cuban-American society, and a fascinating look into the moral quandaries an investigator faces, Bloody Secrets is Garcia-Aguilera's boldest achievement yet.

Carolina Garcia-Aguilera: Bloody Secrets. A Lupe Solano Mystery. Putnam's, ISBN: 0399143866 (February, 1998), 274 p., $23.95.