The Novel Detective by Teres Dovalpage
This reviewer was immediately captivated by Cuban transplant award-winning crime author and educator Teresa Dovalpage’s 12th book Last Seen In Havana and has been catching up with her backlist. Recently released The Novel Detective is described as being “a metafictional mystery” with a “life as art” storyline. The author is the main character, immersed in the fictional plot set in vividly detailed Havana, Cuba, related by the protagonist-slash-narrator in alternating dual timelines.
It begins in pre-Covid early January, 2020 when mystery novelist and New Mexico resident Teresa receives a call from an unfamiliar telephone number in Miami. It’s been forty years since she heard the voice of her childhood chum Estrella, back when they were fourteen year-old school girls growing up in Havana under the Castro regime. A misunderstanding over a boy Estrella favored had created a rift in their friendship. Both girls and their mothers left the island shortly after the deaths of the prettiest girl in the school, their older classmate Yoyi and their licentious English teacher, purportedly dual suicides. According to the perfunctory police investigation, an inappropriate affair had led to Yoyi poisoning herself and Felipe throwing himself from a high window at school. However, Teresa and Estrella suspected murder and the tragic deaths continue to haunt them.
After Estrangement, Childhood Friends’ Paths Converge Once More
With her Coke-bottle thick glasses, shy schoolgirl Teresita was awkward, easily embarrassed and, like many girls her age, obsessed with the detective abilities of Agatha Christie’s Poirot and Miss Marple. Contemplating what her future would be like as an adult and hoping to become a writer, she examined existential ideas she called “Truth of Life” by jotting her observational conclusions in a notebook. Having left increasingly oppressive Cuba at fourteen, she completed school, graduated college, settled in Hobbs, New Mexico, and became a writer of English language books.
Having become a popular Spanish language DJ in Miami, Estrella unexpectedly invites her old friend to accompany her to Havana to get answers to these forty-year old mysterious deaths despite Teresa’s insistence that although she writes about crime-solving, she is certainly not a detective. However, American dollars may elicit forgotten truths and is the preferred currency in Cuba where infrastructure is crumbling and electricity uncertain. Formerly abundant, food is in short supply and hotels catering to tourists deny entrance to their fine restaurants to anyone not staying there. Art deco era homes trail bougainvillea and streets are populated with tank-sized, candy colored 1950’s pre-embargo American vehicles in various states of repair.
The Manzana de Gómez (Gómez Apple) is a five-story historic building constructed in 1917 as a commercial complex and now anchored by Gran Hotel Manzana Kempinski Havana, a five-star luxury hotel where the women are not staying. In 1980, it housed their school, in addition to several businesses including the pharmacy owned by Teresa’s mother. Tidal waves of nostalgic memories flood in as these now middle-aged women traverse Havana and its environs observing, comparing, contrasting and mourning the enormous changes and economic downtown in Cuba since their childhood.
A Foreboding Return Home
Chapters in The Novel Detective alternate between 1980 and 2020 as the duo seek former classmates, educators and anyone who was associated with their school or the two people who died suddenly and tragically, placing themselves in peril as they conduct interviews and review police files. The work is imbued with in-depth, rich personal details of a native daughter with the perspective of having left the country as a young adult. There is excitement and danger in abundance as Teresa and Estrella touch nerves and expose the truth. Teresa Dovalpage is a skilled author and adept tour guide who transports her readers to a now distant time and place wrapped in a complex murder mystery.
Teresa Dovalpage was born in Havana, Cuba, and now lives in New Mexico, where she teaches at the college level. She holds a PhD in Hispanic Literature from the University of New Mexico.
She is the author of thirteen novels and four short story collections published in English and Spanish. Her Havana Mystery series, published by Soho Crime, has earned critical acclaim, including an NBC News selection among the year’s ten best books by and about Latinos, an Amazon Editors’ Pick for Best Mystery, Thriller, and Suspense, and praise in The New York Times. Her latest novel, The Novel Detective, was named a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection.
Her Spanish-language work has been published by Anagrama, Renacimiento, Egales, and other presses in Spain.
A lifelong lover of books, languages, and travel, Teresa draws inspiration from the places she has called home. She lives in southeastern New Mexico, where she teaches, writes, and is always at work on her next novel.
