Customer Reviews

The Lady from Buenos Aires: A Willie Cuesta Mystery

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It takes more than two to tango in "The lady from Buenos Aires". Miami, the capital of Latin America, is the setting for this thriller where a beautiful and mysterious woman, Fiona, hires Cuban-American private eye Willie Cuesta to try to solve a mystery that goes back to Argentina and its "Dirty War" era. Without being didactic John Lantigua gives us an update on these tragic events of the 1970's where thousands of suspected leftists were kidnapped and executed by the Argentine military. Fiona's sister and brother-in-law were one of those who disappeared and became known as "Los Desaparecidos." But since her sister was pregnant at the time Fiona believes her niece was given to a childless military couple who now resides in Miami. Willie's job is to find this young woman and reunite her with her real family. Cuesta's search brings him to "Little Buenos Aires" where everybody seems to be harboring some dark secret. Soon the bodies start to pile up and he has some narrow escapes. Willie is a cool guy, a retired cop who in addition to being a private detective is in charge of security for his brother's Salsa club. With some help from his platonic best friend, a sexy human rights attorney, Cuesta takes on all the challenges and dangers of his assignment with courage and a fatalistic sense of humor. Lantigua, a practicing journalist with vast experience in Latin America, writes in a fast-paced, engaging manner. His descriptions of music (both tango and afro-cuban), food, drinks, smells, are vivid and realistic. The dialogue is snappy, the characters well drawn. I was hooked by this book and couldn't put it down once I started. I highly recommend it. You will be entertained and you may even learn some history.

John Lantigua has written a smart geopolitical thriller with a cliff-hanging plotline that makes it an addictive page-turner. Set in the tango nightclub scene of steamy Miami, detective Willie Cuesta stumbles across the dirty laundry of Argentina's disappeared under the military government. Cuesta has never been more amusingly self-deprecating as he stumbles across buried tragedies and takes readers on a chase across Little Havana and Miami itself. For those headed to Miami, "The Lady From Buenos Aires" book will immerse you in the sights and sounds of the tropical city. For those who enjoyed John LeCarre's "The Constant Gardener," this book will envelop you in a smart, fictionalized drama, based on the city's real-life Latin American intrigues.
Anne-Marie O'Connor

Hollywood is looking for franchises--repeat movies starring the same character--and John Lantigua's Willie Cuesta is one of the most promising undevelopeds waiting for some enterprising producer to beckon.

LADY is Willie's best tale yet. Lantigua really knows South Florida and the richness of the current and constantly evolving Miami background is a genuine secondary treat.

The third element of LADY is its interwoven South American history, here that of Argentina, and the disappearance of the villains of sordid Latin past into the quiet comfort of Miami present.

Let's have more Willie!

John Lantigua's third book featuring Cuban-American private eye Willie Cuesta, The Lady from Buenos Aires, works on a number of levels: as a well-constructed mystery, a cultural snapshot of contemporary Miami, and a literary investigation into one of Latin America's ugliest chapters--Argentina's "disappeared" dissidents. It is to Lantigua's credit that he achieves all of this while keeping the action constantly moving, moving, moving, like the tango beat so often alluded to in the novel (beginning with the sumptuous cover image of two dancers locked in a passionate embrace).
The set-up is classic detective fiction--a beautiful woman (the deliciously named Fiona Bonaventura) needs our hero's help. The case, though, is nothing Hammett or Chandler would have ever imagined: The mystery lady wants Willie to confirm that a young art student spotted in Miami is, in fact, her niece, the daughter of a sister killed during Argentina's "dirty war" of the 1970s and '80s. She suspects that the couple who raised the girl were accomplices in her sister's death, and she wants Willie to prove it, or at least get the girl away from them. Of course, in detective mysteries, as in Latin America's dark past, very little is as it seems, and Willie is quickly plunged into a thick tangle of intrigue, murder, and family betrayal. Along the way, he discovers what William Faulkner always knew: "The past is never dead. It's not even past." Lantigua's Miami isn't the cryogenically-frozen landscape of the 1980s (with its ubiquitous Cuban bad guys), but rather the pulsing, constantly evolving Miami of today--immigrants and exiles from all over, high-rises in the barrio, and polo fields on the edge of the Everglades. Lantigua, like his hero Willie Cuesta, knows his way around town--and around a mystery.

It's been too long since we've seen Willie Cuesta. He is back and better than ever. Lantigua knows of what he writes--the scenes and history are dead on. A one-sitting read-a-thon.

From the hottest tango spots to the best bodegas, Cuban-American PI Willie Cuesta knows his Latin Miami. Specializing in missing persons, his newest case (after "The Ultimate Havana,") expands his reach, landing him in the deadly tangle of Argentina's "disappeared."

The case seems straightforward. Elegant Argentinean Fiona Bonaventura hires him to confirm that a young Miami art student is her murdered sister Sonia's missing child. Sonia and her husband were among those dissidents kidnapped, drugged, and dropped from airplanes into shark-infested waters during the 1980s.

No sooner does Cuesta find Elena than he loses her, the whole family fleeing hastily out the back door of their apartment. And from then on, someone always seems to be a step ahead of him, littering his path with bodies. Could an insider - a family member - be behind Sonia's betrayal and death?

Cuesta's sleuthing takes him into the hidden corners of the Argentine expatriate community, where CIA ties and arms deals lurk behind diplomatic passports and horsy parties, and hardly anyone seems to be who they claim to be.

Riding the hard-boiled wake of Raymond Chandler, award-winning journalist Lantigua delivers snappy prose and well-informed background. The atmosphere is rich with Miami's vibrant Hispanic culture and murky politics. A darkly literate thriller.

Lantigua is a master of the Miami noir novel, writing a thrilling tale laced with a mixture of true detective grit and wry humor. The story may be a personal one, with detective Willie Cuesta's search for a single young woman, but the author's true goal is to explore and illuminate a major violent episode in the history of Argentina, to which the world sadly turned a blind eye. You will keep reading to see how the plot unfolds and how the mystery is solved, and you will be intrigued by the nefarious characters who Willie encounters, but you will also learn about a situation that has had ramifications for a generation, and even now may be unfolding in other incarnations around the world.

A library patron recommended this book to me ~~ she loves mysteries and suspense and I thought, well, I'd try it and see. It is a fast read, very informative (I have never heard of the troubles in Argentina and the "disappeared", nor do I know the history or descriptions of the country) and I am half in love with Willie Cuesta. He's funny, disarmingly so and I can picture a dashing Cuban rushing all over Miami to solve the mystery of who did what 20-30 years ago.

Willie Cuesta was recruited to find a missing girl. An affluent woman, Fiona, hired him to find the girl, Elena, who is the daughter of her sister who was murdered during the student uprising in Buenos Aire years ago. Willie takes the reader down the road of the uprising, the modern-day version of the affluents in Miami, finding the girl Elena only to lose her again within 24 hours ~~ then finding her again ~~ all in the swirls of Latino music, drama and history.

It is a fast-paced novel and a refreshing read from the typical "Who Dun It & Who Killed Who" ~~ but the only reason why I rated it a four was because I figured it all out before the last page was turned. (Probably because I have read so many of these types of books.) I love the Latin flavor of this book ~~ and Willie Cuesta is a hero that I'd love to see up on the silver screen. It's a fun book with a little bit of spice thrown in ~~ so I definitely will be keeping an outlook for Lantigua's books in the future.

10-17-2007

Award-winning journalist and novelist John Lantigua presents The Lady From Buenos Aires, a mystery novel featuring former Miami Police Department detective Willie Cuesta. Cuesta's latest missing-persons case is far from ordinary - hired by an elegant Argentine woman whose dead sister was a casualty of the ruthless Argentine government, he is told to search for a long-lost niece. The deeper he goes into the case, the more often he encounters shady individuals with ties to Argentina's murderous military dictatorship. A thrilling novel of betrayal, layered plots and horrific secrets.

Willie Cuesta's latest mission sizzles with action and incredible twists and turns in this page-gripping mystery/thriller revolving around Argentina's infamous "Dirty War" and the "disappeared-s". What has not disappeared is Cuesta's talent to track down the sordid villains and unlikely heroes in his assignments. Lantigua's very vivid and brilliant descriptions of Miami, extensive knowledge of the subject matter at hand - in this case Argentina and its dirty laundry - and the memorable characters that populate his stories combine to make "The Lady" emminently readable and unputdownable! Hollywood should indeed put Willie Cuesta on celluloid. I look forward to Cuesta's next quest!