For book club this month, we had the theme of “summer heat”
and what could be better than going south to Miami, Florida? I picked up a fantastically
funny new series by Raquel V. Reyes set in Miami, called Caribbean Kitchen
Mysteries.
The Spanish blended throughout with the English had my brain
synapses firing and remembering words I’d long thought I’d forgotten from high
school. I even found myself internally responding to things en Español. “Claro
que si!”
Miriam is a food anthropologist who plans to publish a book,
but in the meantime, she is on side quests to manage a move with her husband
and child to Miami from New York, raise her sweet little boy Mani, AND do a
weekly cooking spot on a talk show.
Her best friend from her teen years, Alma, is a very
successful real estate broker and on a mission to reintroduce Miriam to the
area. Miriam couldn’t manage half so well without her.
It’s Alma who gets her the guest spot on UnMundo doing a
cooking segment. At first Miriam is dead set against it, being a scholar rather
than a television personality or even a chef, but Miriam eventually realizes
she is able to educate the masses about her beloved topic through this medium.
Alma also wants to introduce her to the successful people in the area. That
means getting her in at the country club that Miriam’s mother-in-law belongs
to. Of course, someone goes face first into their lukewarm mayonnaise and soggy
chicken salad at the first luncheon she attends.
Miriam is sitting next to the unfortunate woman when it
happens. The official story is the young woman died of a heart attack due to
her drug use history, but Miriam is bothered by it all and can’t let it rest.
The author manages to keep things alternating between serious
and humorous, alleviating the tension with great characters who have
interesting reactions to serious situations.
Her mother-in-law becomes more clearly antagonistic, racist, and
classist as the books progress. It’s presented as funny, but it’s serious too.
“…My mother-in-law appeared in my unfurnished living room. My
mouth was faster than my good sense. ‘Did I leave the door unlocked?’”
The humor is real and relatable.
Then there’s the situation with her husband, Robert, who she refers
to as Roberto. He’s always been a good guy but now he is working long hours and
takes a job with a corporate firm, the antithesis of his goals as an
environmental lawyer.
Miriam is understandably very worried when she begins to
suspect that her husband is being pursued by a former girlfriend that her
mother-in-law approves of far more than her.
It’s a very fun, fast-paced, and humorous cozy mystery series.
There’s already two more— Calypso, Corpses, and Cooking and Barbacoa,
Bomba, and Betrayal. I think they get better as they go along. I’m
looking forward to the next book this fall. And the audio es perfecta!
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