Palms, Paradise, Poison

November 29, 2021
Keyse-Walker’s intriguing third outing for Constable Teddy Creque of the Royal Virgin Islands Police Force (after 2017’s Beach, Breeze, Bloodshed) finds the tiny island of Anegada bracing for a hurricane. As everyone takes shelter, Teddy receives a mayday from Kevin Faulkner, a captain aboard a sinking freighter. Teddy heads into the storm, but Kevin is dead by the time he reaches the freighter. Then a woman leaps onto Teddy’s boat who turns out to be escaped convict Marianna Oro (known as Queen Ya-Ya for practicing black magic), and the two barely survive the trip back to the police station. After the hurricane passes, Teddy is surprised to find Queen Ya-Ya gone, one of his officers incoherent, and a longtime island resident nearly dead. So begins Teddy’s obsessive quest to bring Queen Ya-Ya to justice—a mission fraught with violence and which takes him from the British Virgin Islands to Cuba and back again. Keyse-Walker smoothly integrates Caribbean lore and culture into the narrative, which is peopled with distinctive, well-wrought characters. Scenes of animal sacrifices, however, are not for the faint of heart. Readers will look forward to Teddy’s further adventures.

December 15, 2021
Constable Teddy Creque, the sole police officer on Anegada, a tiny island in the British Virgin Islands, conducts two daring rescues during a massive hurricane, capturing escaped prisoner Marianna Orro, a self-proclaimed Palo Mayombe priestess, in the process. With the hurricane raging, Orro escapes from the Anegada jail, leaving two men dead and one dazed with no memory of her escape. Creque soon learns a fishing boat has disappeared and believes it may have been stolen by Orro. When the boat is located on the coast of Cuba, Creque's superiors send him to Cuba, both to oversee salvaging the boat and to find evidence of Orro's presence. Working with Cuban police officer Luz Garcia, the two travel to the boat and find that the tiny town nearby is apparently being terrorized by dark magic. A principled hero, solid details of police work and the practices of Palo Mayombe and Sateria, and lushly described settings permeated by unease and possible supernatural phenomena combine to distinguish this ambiguous, unusual mystery.

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Starred review from November 15, 2021
A Caribbean copper hunts an escaped killer. Constable Teddy Creque of the Royal Virgin Islands Police Force has a long history with troublesome women. So when he hears that the convict who escaped from prison on Tortola is Marianna Orro, aka Queen Ya-Ya, he knows that he's going to be in for it. But first he has to deal with another equally deadly female: Hurricane Leatha, which is bearing down on Anegada, the little island it's his sworn duty to protect. Kevin Faulkner, a seasoned fisherman who should know better, has sailed out into the storm in his boat, Isabella, and Teddy must take the police skiff Lily B after him. What he finds when he catches up to Isabella is one dead Kevin and one very much alive Ya-Ya. He locks the 6-foot-tall escapee in his local jail, but when he comes back from another rescue in Pomato Point, the cell is empty. No one can explain how the majestic Ya-Ya managed to escape again, although when Nanny Giles reports her boat, the Horse-eye, missing, he has an idea where she went. And when the Horse-eye turns up on a deserted beach in Cuba, Teddy gets the surprise of his life: The RVIPF is sending him to Cuba to bring it back. In Havana he meets the woman who may be the scariest of all--Subteniente Luz Garcia of the Polic�a Nacional Revolucionaria, whose revolutionary fervor is matched only by her devotion to the orishas of Santeria--and she takes him on a ride that makes Leatha look tame. The battle between rational, supernatural, and criminal provides a tropical treat like no other.

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June 1, 2022
Keyse-Walker's latest is set in 1950s Cuba, home of Ernest Hemingway and gangster Meyer Lansky and where the sun, sea, senoritas, and free-flowing rum hide abject poverty and the ugliness of dictator Batista's corrupt government. Henry Gore, recently demobbed from the U.S. Air Force, decides to flee the bleak American winters and head to Havana, where he plans to enjoy the city's many temptations. But the reality is very different from Henry's expectations, and he soon finds himself in hot water with Batista's government. The only way to redeem the situation is to agree to help the dictator shut down the rebels who want to overthrow the government. To do so, Henry must masquerade as a gunrunner willing to sell weapons to the rebels. When he meets the rebel leaders, however, he begins to sympathize with their cause, and the situation quickly spirals out of control. Henry finds himself in a deadly shoot-out between the government and the rebels, suspected of disloyalty by Batista's lieutenant, and forced to make a terrible choice. Darkly atmospheric writing, an action-packed plot, plenty of suspense, and a sometimes-hapless hero caught between saving his own life and doing the right thing drive this outstanding, packs-a-punch thriller.

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