Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: Death Comes in Through the Kitchen by Teresa Dovelpage

Death Comes in Through the Kitchen by Teresa Dovelpage (Soho Crime, 2018) is an intriguing culinary mystery that is by no means cozy. At all. Set in Havana late in the Fidel Castro regime the book begins when Matthew, a journalist from San Diego, travels to Cuba to marry his online girlfriend Yarmila, whom he met through her food blog that showcases classic Cuban cuisine. He is traveling with another American who is meeting her much younger lover. Yarmi is not at the airport to meet him, as they had arranged, so he makes his way to her apartment house, only to find her body in the bathtub there.

The police are well aware that Yarmi was killed before Matthew arrived in Havana but they confiscate his passport anyway. He is limited as to what he can do in this highly regimented country without a passport and after a few days he grows desperate enough to enlist the help of a private detective to clear his name so he can return to the United States. In the meantime he hears enough to notice gaps between the persona Yarmi projected on her blog and the person her closest friends knew. While he turns the discrepancies over in his mind, he sees something of Havana and the deprivations its residents endure, as well as the small ways they circumvent the severe limitations on their lives.

This book is as much a social and political commentary on the time and setting as it is a mystery, perhaps more. The impact of governmental oppression and economic hardships is clearly delineated in a matter-of-fact way, which renders the effect more powerful. Every two or three chapters is punctuated by one of Yarmi’s blog posts which includes a classic Cuban recipe and the comments of her readers. The book begins with Matt’s arrival in Cuba and ends with his departure, a clean way to delineate the beginning and ending of his adventure here.

This is the second book I’ve read in as many months in which the ease of getting people to accept a false online persona is a major theme. Matt realizes just how gullible he has been by the time the plot is resolved, and I expect readers will have every sympathy for him.

Publishers Weekly starred review.

Hardcover: 368 pages

Publisher: Soho Crime; 1st Edition edition (March 20, 2018)

ISBN-10: 1616958847

ISBN-13: 978-1616958848

Aubrey Hamilton ©2018

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal IT projects by day and reads mysteries at night.