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Lupe Solano #4
A Miracle in Paradise: A Lupe Solano Mystery
The Order of the Illumination of the Sacred Virgin is predicting a major miracle, and Lupe Solano has been hired to verify the event, but his investigation into spiritual matters soon uncovers criminal behavior behind the convent's cloistered walls. 15,000 first printing.
- GenresMysteryLatin American
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1999
About the author
Carolina Garcia-Aguilera
16 books52 followersCarolina Garcia-Aguilera (born 1949) is a Cuban-born American writer. She has written a series of mystery stories, and two novels.
She was born in Havana, Cuba in July 1949. In 1960, she emigrated to the United States, living in Palm Beach, Florida, and then New York City. She graduated from college, with degrees in history and political science, a master's in language and linguistics, and an MBA in finance. She is currently working on a PhD in Latin American affairs.
She lives in Miami Beach, Florida, and is married (twice) with 3 daughters. In order to get realistic information for her mystery books, she became a licensed private investigator in Florida, and started a successful business in the field.
She has written a series of mystery books, featuring a female Cuban-American private investigator in Miami named Lupe (Guadalupe) Solano. The series is celebrated for its rich and detailed coverage of the Cuban American, Catholic, exile community in Florida, their history, and the differences and conflicts between the generations regarding Cuba and Fidel Castro. Her most recent books were two novels. She has not published any books since 2003.
Series:
* Lupe Solano Mystery
She was born in Havana, Cuba in July 1949. In 1960, she emigrated to the United States, living in Palm Beach, Florida, and then New York City. She graduated from college, with degrees in history and political science, a master's in language and linguistics, and an MBA in finance. She is currently working on a PhD in Latin American affairs.
She lives in Miami Beach, Florida, and is married (twice) with 3 daughters. In order to get realistic information for her mystery books, she became a licensed private investigator in Florida, and started a successful business in the field.
She has written a series of mystery books, featuring a female Cuban-American private investigator in Miami named Lupe (Guadalupe) Solano. The series is celebrated for its rich and detailed coverage of the Cuban American, Catholic, exile community in Florida, their history, and the differences and conflicts between the generations regarding Cuba and Fidel Castro. Her most recent books were two novels. She has not published any books since 2003.
Series:
* Lupe Solano Mystery
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
October 8, 2013
This fourth book of the series. Lupe Solano is a Catholic girl from a wealthy Cuban-American family and works a private investigator in Miami. This book is based in Miami and involves extreme ties to Catholicism and Cuban politics.
It is difficult to identify with the story line if you don't share the same heritage. Lupe is portrayed as a strong and independent woman who is not easily intimidated; yet she allows herself to be manipulated and taken advantage of in certain situations. Although Lupe is supposed to belong to a close nit family, few family members are identified as participants in her life in this book. The ability to create so many different characters and interweave them was commendable.
There is a taste of frustration by the illumination of questions that are never answered.
It is difficult to identify with the story line if you don't share the same heritage. Lupe is portrayed as a strong and independent woman who is not easily intimidated; yet she allows herself to be manipulated and taken advantage of in certain situations. Although Lupe is supposed to belong to a close nit family, few family members are identified as participants in her life in this book. The ability to create so many different characters and interweave them was commendable.
There is a taste of frustration by the illumination of questions that are never answered.
August 9, 2020
This book starts strong but gets lost a bit in the middle and fails to deliver the ending you're hoping for. In this fourth outing by Carolina Garcia-Aguilera's Miami PI Guadalupe "Lupe" Solano, our self-described "Cuban-American Princess" is asked by an unusual client to tackle a very unusual case. Specifically, her sister Lourdes the nun takes her to see her order's Mother Superior, who hires Lupe to investigate a rival order of nuns, the Order of the Illumination of the Sacred Virgin. Why? Because this other order, based in Yugoslavia and only recently arrived in Miami, is promising a miracle will occur on Oct. 10, aka Cuban Independence Day. The miracle: On that most sacred day to Miami's Cuban population, a revered statue of a Cuban religious icon—the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre—will weep real tears. Lourdes' Mother Superior wants Lupe to find out if this is real or just bunk and do it fast -- the date is a month away.
I read a lot of mysteries and I can't ever recall a set-up like that one. Nor do I recall an oh-so-Florida tactic that Lourdes uses to keep tabs on the comings-and-goings at the nunnery: She hires a good-looking woman to dress up in a skimpy bikini and peddle hot dogs from a cart parked across from its entrance. When this book was written in the 1990s, thong-clad hot dog vendors were all over South Florida, distracting some motorists and outraging others by showing so much skin. Disguising an investigator that way to do surveillance is a brilliant strategy -- until a meddling code enforcement officer interferes.
That's the point at which Lupe's story starts to veer off into the swamp, unfortunately, as she suffers a crisis of confidence tied to her Catholic upbringing. Our first-person narrator, usually so full of verve and wit, instead spends page after page moping around and confessing her doubts about her faith, and her concerns about the impact this miracle will have on Miami's Cubans. She also begins a tentative romance with a leftist Cuban activist whom she consults on Cuban politics, although those discussions never seem to go anywhere and don't really add a lot to the story.
At one point there's a cute complication when the nuns set up a 1-800 number to advertise the upcoming miracle, but Lupe fails to do anything with that clue other than fret about whether it will lead to media coverage that could complicate her investigation.
In between we meet a dowdy nun from Massachusetts and her distrustful brother, who when he first meets Lupe bangs her over the head and knocks her out. Lupe's attempts to draw them out about what's really going on fail, and in the meantime she's been cut off from her client and can't ask the questions she needs to ask.
She makes little progress on the case for about 3/4 of the book, which makes for a frustrating read. And instead of the usual sexytime romps with a variety of suitors, Lupe spends time agonizing over her attraction to this random activist she knew in high school who has little connection to the plot, and also agonizing over whether her missteps have pushed longtime lover and sometime attorney Tommy McDonald to the point of dumping her. I got my hopes up when Lupe went undercover, but the results don't add much to the story either.
What's worse is that every time she stumbles, the author has Lupe review what's happened so far, as if the author doesn't trust the reader to remember what he or she just read.
I hate to say it, but I cheered up when the bodies began piling up (the author once promised three murders per book or your money back). That's when Lupe finally got a grip on things and started taking action. But the ending, where the "miracle" comes back up again, renewed my frustration as the author hinted that it was phony without providing an explanation for how it happened.
The author has been a Miami PI herself, and so her writing about real-life PI tactics -- surveillance, going undercover, running license plates, pulling military records -- as well as her comments about various Miami neighborhoods tend to give her stories a refreshing versimilitude. An additional attraction is Lupe's charming narration -- sardonic but not cynical, self-aware but not self-servin. Her voice is a welcome change from all the hard-bitten male private eyes going down these mean streets with their guns cocked. Lupe will go down the mean streets too, but she's driving a Mercedes and she keeps her Beretta in her Chanel bag. I am hopeful that No. 5 in this series brings back the verve and vivaciousness that first grabbed my attention.
I read a lot of mysteries and I can't ever recall a set-up like that one. Nor do I recall an oh-so-Florida tactic that Lourdes uses to keep tabs on the comings-and-goings at the nunnery: She hires a good-looking woman to dress up in a skimpy bikini and peddle hot dogs from a cart parked across from its entrance. When this book was written in the 1990s, thong-clad hot dog vendors were all over South Florida, distracting some motorists and outraging others by showing so much skin. Disguising an investigator that way to do surveillance is a brilliant strategy -- until a meddling code enforcement officer interferes.
That's the point at which Lupe's story starts to veer off into the swamp, unfortunately, as she suffers a crisis of confidence tied to her Catholic upbringing. Our first-person narrator, usually so full of verve and wit, instead spends page after page moping around and confessing her doubts about her faith, and her concerns about the impact this miracle will have on Miami's Cubans. She also begins a tentative romance with a leftist Cuban activist whom she consults on Cuban politics, although those discussions never seem to go anywhere and don't really add a lot to the story.
At one point there's a cute complication when the nuns set up a 1-800 number to advertise the upcoming miracle, but Lupe fails to do anything with that clue other than fret about whether it will lead to media coverage that could complicate her investigation.
In between we meet a dowdy nun from Massachusetts and her distrustful brother, who when he first meets Lupe bangs her over the head and knocks her out. Lupe's attempts to draw them out about what's really going on fail, and in the meantime she's been cut off from her client and can't ask the questions she needs to ask.
She makes little progress on the case for about 3/4 of the book, which makes for a frustrating read. And instead of the usual sexytime romps with a variety of suitors, Lupe spends time agonizing over her attraction to this random activist she knew in high school who has little connection to the plot, and also agonizing over whether her missteps have pushed longtime lover and sometime attorney Tommy McDonald to the point of dumping her. I got my hopes up when Lupe went undercover, but the results don't add much to the story either.
What's worse is that every time she stumbles, the author has Lupe review what's happened so far, as if the author doesn't trust the reader to remember what he or she just read.
I hate to say it, but I cheered up when the bodies began piling up (the author once promised three murders per book or your money back). That's when Lupe finally got a grip on things and started taking action. But the ending, where the "miracle" comes back up again, renewed my frustration as the author hinted that it was phony without providing an explanation for how it happened.
The author has been a Miami PI herself, and so her writing about real-life PI tactics -- surveillance, going undercover, running license plates, pulling military records -- as well as her comments about various Miami neighborhoods tend to give her stories a refreshing versimilitude. An additional attraction is Lupe's charming narration -- sardonic but not cynical, self-aware but not self-servin. Her voice is a welcome change from all the hard-bitten male private eyes going down these mean streets with their guns cocked. Lupe will go down the mean streets too, but she's driving a Mercedes and she keeps her Beretta in her Chanel bag. I am hopeful that No. 5 in this series brings back the verve and vivaciousness that first grabbed my attention.
October 8, 2018
My foray into private eye mysteries! It was amusing. PI Solano spent more time talking about her lifestyle and love life. Written in 1999 and set in Miami, she relies on smart/sarcastic quips about Catholicism, nuns, Cuban culture. A miracle that was to occur, was found to be a hoax by some overly zealous people to overthrow Castro and reunite Cuba with the diaspora.
She was almost 100 pages into the book before she really started to develop the story. Some story lines were rushed others just dropped. Perhaps a beach read, but I'd not be inclined to pick up another Lupe Solano story.
She was almost 100 pages into the book before she really started to develop the story. Some story lines were rushed others just dropped. Perhaps a beach read, but I'd not be inclined to pick up another Lupe Solano story.
March 6, 2025
A PI is hired to investigate the potential miracle of a statue of the Virgin Mary crying. It was an interesting look into the life of Cubans in Miami during Castro’s reign and there was some intrigue, but overall it was quite repetitive in a way that made me lose interest. Yes, there are parts of murder mysteries that need to be thought through over and over again, but the way it was done in this book was overdone and almost exact repetitions. Her on- and - off again relationships with all the men in the book just seemed to be added for a bit more interest with no real addition to the story
April 6, 2018
A friend lent me a copy of this book and requested that I read it. I am glad that I did, it was a great book. I enjoyed it.
February 18, 2019
I found this book at a library sale and it did not disappoint! I absolutely loved the Lupe character and look forward to reading more books in the series!
April 2, 2021
Light and easy. Character is Private Investigator Lupe Soldano. Case is a miracle, Virgin is going to cry to bring Cubans from here and Island together.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 17, 2023
Very Interesting twists and turns.
January 18, 2008
This is the second Lupe Solano mystery I have read. I found it to be a bit heavy on the Catholicism theme (perhaps because I am not Catholic myself). Set in Miami, it interweaves Cuban politics with the Catholic Church. Not my cup of tea, but the mystery plot was okay.
August 27, 2009
Let me be clear: this was NOT a good book. Even for the crappy paperback crime genre. But there just aren't enough smart, single, wiseass Cuban-American gals solving mysteries these days, so I'm giving it a pass.
January 4, 2016
Found this author when searching for a new mystery writer of color. Glad to know about her, I like the protagonist in this series, and appreciate the Cuban political and cultural context. Ordering the older books in the series and will probably move on to her later books and short stories.
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July 23, 2010Formulaic albeit entertaining. And, please, proofreaders: A short scholarly treatise is called a monograph, not a monogram.
August 1, 2011
interesting to read about Cuban exiles and their children and how they feel about Cuba and the problems..
October 3, 2013
Not her best work.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews