Bøger i Willie Cuesta Mystery serien

"Willie Cuesta, former Miami Police detective turned private investigator, is struggling to pay the bills when he receives a call from an old family friend. Cesar Mendoza is the blind, elderly owner of Tabacos El Ciego, a cigar store in Little Havana. Cesar is worried about Victoria Espada, a friend from the old days in Cuba. As a young woman, she was so beautiful that cigar makers competed to put her image on their boxes. She came from a long line of tobacco growers and married a man from an old, respected clan of cigar makers. The couple, who represented one of the great cigar dynasties of all time, fled the island after the revolution, but things didn't go well. Ernesto Espada ultimately committed suicide, leaving his widow with two young children to raise. Now, her son, a less-than-successful cigar salesman, has gone missing, and the detective is tasked with finding him. Willie's search introduces him to the burgeoning cigar industry. Aficionados want real Cuban cigars, which aren't available in the United States because of the embargo, so smuggling is a lucrative business. The case becomes even more intriguing when Willie picks up a cigar that turns out to be a counterfeit El Embajador, or The Ambassador. The real ones were made in Cuba for Castro and his diplomats to hand out to political leaders around the world, and they're known to be the best in the world-the ultimate Havana. When dead bodies begin to pile up and men with guns turn up at Willie's home to warn him off the case, he suspects he's in the crosshairs of rival gangs. Set against the backdrop of the botâanicas and cigar shops of the Cuban ex-pat community in Little Havana and the glittering mansions and speedboats of the ultra-wealthy, the investigation ultimately takes Willie to the Dominican Republic, where he finds the missing man-and way more than he bargained for! JOHN LANTIGUA is an award-winning journalist and novelist. His novels include Remember My Face (Arte Pâublico Press, 2020), On Hallowed Ground (Arte Pâublico, 2011), The Lady from Buenos Aires (Arte Pâublico Press, 2007), Player's Vendetta (Signet, 1999), Twister (Simon and Schuster, 1992) and Burn Season (Putnam, 1989). His first novel, Heat Lightning (Putnam, 1987), was a finalist for the Edgar Awards Best First Novel. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his journalistic writings, including two Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards (2004, 2006) and the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting (1999). He lives and works in South Florida"--

"Willie Cuesta, former Miami Police Department detective-turned-private investigator, is swinging in his hammock, estimating the number of mango daquiris he can squeeze from a ripe piece of fruit about to fall from his tree. He's also waiting for a prospective client who refused to discuss her case over the phone. Ellie Hernandez hasn't seen her fiancâe, Roberto "Bobby" Player, in ten days, and she wants Willie to find him. Bobby has been obsessed with the suspicious death of his parents more than thirty-five years ago in Cuba, and he recently went to the island to find their killers. Only six years old when they were murdered, he was living in the United States, where they were supposed to join him. He was one of the "Peter Pan" kids smuggled out when Fidel Castro took over. Willie learns the Players controlled one of the most successful casinos on the island and a large sum of money-half a million dollars-disappeared with their deaths. His investigation reveals an assortment of suspicious characters who were in Havana when the Players were killed, including a former Cuban spy now living in Little Havana, Mafia gangsters involved in gambling institutions and even an undercover US intelligence agent. Were they murdered by the Cuban government for being involved in the counter-revolution underground movement? Did the Mafia kill them to steal their fortune? Or did anti-communist Cubans believe they were traitors and execute them? Rumors and questions abound, but when men in rubber masks firing machine guns turn up, Willie knows someone is trying to keep a long-buried secret under wraps!"--