The Devil's Mambo (Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: child porn, Mistress Love, Lady Chen, Sueño Latino (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Ex-homicide detective and Navy SEAL Nick Esperanza dives deep into New York's sexual underworld in this graphic, gritty first novel. Esperanza has everything: he's a $30 million Lotto winner, retired at 40, madly in love with his gorgeous girlfriend, Legs, and singing the occasional song in his thriving salsa club. When Legs's niece disappears, he reluctantly agrees to take a break from the good life to scout around. Playwright and filmmaker Rodriguez gives his Puerto Rican Spenser a standard supporting cast-an FBI agent brother, a fellow former SEAL running club security-and starts out mostly painting by the numbers. Then the trail leads to kiddie porn ring the Candyland Club and its sadomasochistic enforcers, and Esperanza's taste for kinky sex meets its match in the vicious Mistress Devona Love, who reduces the once cocksure investigator to a quivering heap in the book's best and raunchiest scene. The squeamish may wince as Esperanza does his desperate and dark dance down the wild side.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

When NYPD homicide cop Nicholas Esperanza wins 30 million bucks in the lottery, he does what any right-thinking fella would do: chucks his job, buys a nightclub, and spends his days relaxing, and his nights . . . well, let's just say the man likes his fun. But when his girlfriend, Legs (really), asks him to find her missing niece, our hero soon finds that you can take the man out of the cop shop, but you can't take the cop out of the man. A very uneven mix of private-eye yarn and erotic thriller, the novel will please some readers while it turns off others. The language in the novel is frank and may strike some readers as over the top, but the story is well plotted and the characters, especially Esperanza, are well drawn. This may lack the depth one associates with top-level hard-boiled fiction, but it packs the punch and entertaining edge of the pulps. Just be sure to keep it away from cozy fans. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Kensington Trade Paper (May 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0758217102
• ISBN-13: 978-0758217103
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #804,448 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Exciting" New Genre, November 7, 2008

By	book nerd "book nerd" (NYC, USA) - See all my reviews

Based on the book jacket, the book appears as if it's going to be like any other noir detective story. But as soon as you start to read, you realize this is something different. Esperanza experiences things that NO One should have to go through. I blushed at a few scenes and cringed at others but I had to keep reading! My biggest revelation was: this is an "Exciting New Genre!" (pun intended). Just think, erotic, Latino noir. A first....

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Frustratingly Mixed Feelings., November 1, 2008

By	Lady Action Fan (Illinois) - See all my reviews

3.5 stars. A minor spoiler or two.

The good thing about this book is that it made me think hard about how I view "heroes", or rather, anti-heroes. The not so good thing is that it was very uneven in its depictions. Rodriguez does a fantastic job with the sex, s/m, violence and, of all things, the hopping club scenes. It's pretty much everything else that I had a hard time believing in.

As a reader, I'd be in this enjoyable groove, totally immersed in the story, and then I'd hit a passage where the descriptions are so choppy and sparse that they would best be described as perfunctory. In all honesty, the "mystery"/"hunt" reads like filler to get from one kink scene to another, the writer's true love and purpose.

About 90% of the story is told by Esperanza, so the reader is viewing the world through his eyes. (The remaining 10% is Devona and random other characters. Devona is understandable. But the jump into other random heads was jarring.)

The problem with Esperanza's narration is that we know he is a great singer, because he tells us so. He was great detective, because he tells us so. He was a kick--- Navy Seal, because he tells us so. He is a crack shot, because he tells us so. Yet few, if any, of his thought processes or behaviors really bear this out. He gets "caught" because he doesn't follow his instincts even though he knew going into the situation it was probably a set up of some kind. He enters a scene that should have been familiar to any one with his background as being dangerous, yet he has little guard up.

The subsequent flip and focus reads as kind of "meh." There's definite conflict in Esperanza over what happened to him. He's divided between having despised it and having enjoyed it. Rodriguez takes such pleasure in describing/recreating what was enjoyable, that, as a reader, it's difficult to believe in the rage and hatred, which he doesn't depict as strongly. Again, that's described perfunctorily, required by the plot.

Interestingly, as a lover of anti-heros, I found myself turned off not by Esperanza's interest in kink, but his use of drugs in one scene. I mean, I can easily root for a "hero" who beats up and kills people, but one who willingly uses drugs, I find reprehensible. Something to make one go hmmm.....

For that Rodriguez got the extra 1.5 stars.

5.0 out of 5 stars A demented, erotic thrill that exposes the underbelly of society, April 8, 2008

By	Jason (Backwater, Alabama) - See all my reviews

The Devil's Mambo starts off with Nicholas Esperanza enjoying life. He's a former Navy Seal and NYPD homicide detective who hit a 30 Million lottery and provided an avenue for early retirement. He has the hottest nightclub in town, Sueno Latino, a gorgeous girlfriend, Legs, and a good group of longtime friends. In every way possible his life is fulfilled and satisfying, until one day Legs asks for a favor.

Legs asks Nick to see her abuela (grandmother) about Alina, Legs' buck-wild niece who has run away from home on multiple occasions. Abuela is worried and having visions about Alina hanging out with a bad element, a dangerous crowd. Because he loves Legs so much, and because it suits his background so well, Nick takes on the challenge of finding Alina and bringing her back home.

In no time at all, Nick is immersed in a world of sexual deviancy, where pain and pleasure is mixed, and for those seeking the extreme, violence and crime is added. He realizes that Alina has been hanging out with a tough crowd, from transvestites in underground sex clubs to pimps and prostitutes who have links to a world of degradation and sexual pleasure, and to Jason Ryback and his wife Mistress Devona Love.

Jason Ryback and Mistress Devona Love are the extreme of all extremes; they are pain artists and torture experts, and they are intricately involved in the seedy world with which Nick will soon be familiar. They use people to fulfill Love's extreme sadistic desires, and sometimes to do the bidding of a shady, part-time employer named Bishop who is involved in the sickest of the sick: kiddie porn. In their daily lives, the concepts of asphyxiation, electrical play, and murder are as normal as eating corn flakes for breakfast.

It's up to Nick to fight through the pimps, prostitutes, trannies, doms, subs, strippers, and murderers to find Alina within the New York underbelly saturated with sex, drugs, perversion, and crime.

Along the way he gains first-hand knowledge and experience of the insanely intense world of hardcore BDSM. He learns his limits of pain and pleasure, and the extent to which the two coexist. He learns that in order to survive in such a bizarre and deranged environment, he'll have to find his inner-sociopath and ignore his burgeoning sexual desires.

This is a hot page-turner that is so twisted and interesting that it simply can't be put down. It touches on the trashy nerve we all have within, the urge we have to peek at the magazines covered in plastic or the garbage tabloid. It's the desire for danger and the uknown that makes us attempt new experiences, and this book tugs at the roots beneath the tree of risk.