Fear and Loathing in Havana - with a Twist
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Author: Lia Matera
Title: Havana Twist Genre: mystery Before there was a "Dharma," Lia Matera created Willa Jansson: the blonde daughter of two of the only 60's hippies that didn't make the transition into 80's yuppies. Like Jenna Elfman's TV character, Willa is attracted to conservative men; unlike Dharma, she's mildly embarrassed by her eternally lefty parents. Lia Matera is one of a handful of mystery writers who juggle two different detective series. J. A. Jance does a fine job with her Joanna Brady and J. P. Beaumont series; Julie Smith does likewise with her Skip Langdon and Rebecca Schwartz series. In the other two cases, the protagonists are distinctly different: Brady's female and an Arizona sheriff, Beaumont's male and a Seattle ex-cop; Langdon's a New Orleans cop and Schwartz is a San Francisco lawyer. Matera's reluctant detectives are both Bay-Area female lawyers; certainly at least partially autobiographical. I've been a fan of Matera, especially her Laura DiPalma series (Designer Crimes and Face Value, among others). Previous entries in the Willa Jansson series (Last Chants and Star Witness) have also been quite readable. That's why I was sorely disappointed by Havana Twist. It simply was not up to the level of quality I'd come to expect from Matera. Willa's mother went to Cuba and she didn't come back. Willa's worried: who wouldn't be? so she sneaks into Cuba to find Mom and gets caught in a web of lies so convoluted that I suspect Matera herself got lost from time to time. Willa gets kicked out of the country; two people get murdered; and Willa's heartthrob from previous novels (San Francisco homicide cop Don Surgelato) takes her back to Cuba to look for Mom some more. Along the way Willa and Don trip over money-grubbing capitalists, bleeding-heart socialists, heroes of the revolution, a YUM King (Young Urban Marxist), and at least a million people who aren't who they say they are. The double and triple-dealing and -crossing is so rampant that one almost needs a diagrammed chart of the many characters to keep track. The plot meanders through rising and falling subplots and finally peters out into a plot twist so unsatisfying that O. Henry's cat wouldn't have deigned to cough up a hairball on it. Matera appears to have done some of her homework -- read that: Lia went on vacation to Havana -- so she's painted a pretty desolate picture of that last bastion of Marxism in the western hemisphere. The depiction of a country lying in ruins since the collapse of the Soviet Union is depressing and illuminating at the same time. She's described an environment in which tourists are isolated from the real Havana and kept in line by a cadre of party functionaries. It doesn't exactly sound like a stop I'd schedule on my next Caribbean cruise... Matera has written a murder mystery in which the culprits are not only not brought to justice; they are not really even named. It's a novel in which characters appear and disappear at will, without resolution and often without reason. It's a plot in which the protagonists are out of place and thus perpetually awkward (even more so than usual for the socially inept Willa); it's a mystery in which the "detectives" detect only the sad state of affairs in Cuba and learn nothing about the question they are supposedly solving. I had expected better from Matera based on previous work; I only hope she'll bounce back next time. all content copyright © 2014 by scmrak
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