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COPYRIGHT 2005 South Florida Sun-Sentinal
Byline: Oline H. Cogdill
MYSTERY NOVEL PAINTS A VIVID PICTURE OF CUBA
``Suspicion of Rage'' by Barbara Parker; Dutton ($24.95)
As ``Suspicion of Rage'' winds up its plot in Havana, it's not just the vivid descriptions of 50-year-old exhaust-spewing cars, or the beautiful but crumbling architecture, or even the pain of politics dividing families that stays with the reader.
Instead, it is the details of daily life under Castro's regime: Like toilets not having seats because they are a luxury, or hairspray used to fill cigarette lighters, or the gift of an Oregon apple, its sweetness as valuable as a gem. It's this attention to the little things that add up to an overwhelming examination of the way people live in modern Cuba.
South Florida author Barbara Parker has established a reputation for solid plots coupled with realistic characters, but her 10th novel takes her work to a new level. ``Suspicion of Rage'' delivers a strong political thriller as well as a look at families whose ties withstand the divisions of politics, geography and time. It's a familiar South Florida theme that Parker explores through lawyers Gail Connor, representing old Miami, and Anthony Quintana, a Cuban-American.
The story starts in Coral Gables but quickly moves to Cuba, where Anthony, Gail and their blended family travel for the quinceanera of Anthony's niece. The result is a textbook study on how location affects character.
Anthony and Gail planned the trip to this ``other family'' to announce their new marriage to his sister, Marta, and for his teenage daughter and son and Gail's 11-year-old daughter to meet their relatives. Gail also hopes the trip will give her insight into the complicated Anthony, for whom Cuban politics are not simple.
But the night before they leave, following a party at the home of his fervently anti-Castro grandfather, Anthony is visited by...
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