From Publishers Weekly
Edgar Award-winner Heffernan's strong new entry in his series featuring New York City detective Paul Devlin, last seen in Winter's Gold (1997), opens with a bangDa mob shooting in Manhattan. Later, when Devlin's lover, Adrianna Mendez, learns that her Aunt Maria, a Cuban doctor, is in a Havana hospital, Devlin drops the mob case and accompanies Adrianna to Cuba. There they discover that Maria, a popular folk heroine called the Red Angel and a Castro confidante, is dead and her body missing. As officials from two state security agencies monitor the search for Maria's corpse, Devlin calls in his assistant, Ollie Pitts, for back up. Their investigation leads into the mysterious and dangerous world of Afro-Cuban religion, especially the violent Abakua secret society. But don't forget those New York mobsters. This is a very political book, with Heffernan's complex plot weaving together the Mafia with greedy U.S. and Cuban government officials. Although Devlin and Pitts are standard issue, as are the mobsters, the Cuban characters are well-drawn and attractive, even when slippery. Heffernan also does a superb job explaining the varieties of Cuban religious experience, the Cuban sensibility and the ominous shadows of a rigid police state, though at times such explanations slow down the action. Agent, Gloria Loomis. (Dec.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
The "Red Angel" has disappeared, and since she's the aunt of New York detective Paul Devlin's lover, Devlin is in hot pursuit. Because she was a doctor serving Cuba's poor, finding her may not be so easyDespecially since she has evidently fallen afoul of a voodoo sect intent on using her bones in a gruesome ceremony. Another addition to an Edgar Award-winning series. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Book Description
Tough New York City detective Paul Devlin -- the hero of William Heffernan's acclaimed Edgar Award-winning series -- has been in tight spots before. But now he faces a devastating reckoning on dangerously unfamiliar ground: a depressed, would-be tropical paradise shrouded in fear, superstition, and lethal mystery ninety miles off the Florida coast.Red AngelDeath threats from the capos of New York's top mob families don't faze Devlin in the slightest. But anyone who brings grief to the people he loves is going to have to pay big-time. That's why Devlin's accompanying Adrianna Mendez -- the beautiful artist who's the lady of his heart -- to the forbidden Communist-controlled isle of Cuba, where Adrianna's aunt Maria has met with a serious "accident. "A selfless healer and great hero of Castro's revolution, Dr. Maria Mendez was revered throughout the island as Angel Rojo, the "Red Angel." Responding to information that the beloved national icon was critically injured in a car wreck, Devlin and Adrianna arrive in Havana only to learn from local policeman Major Arnaldo Martinez that the Angel has died. But the news gets worse still. Her body, burned beyond recognition, has vanished -- apparently stolen by members of the powerful, bloodthirsty voodoo sect known as the Abakua, who intend to use parts of the great lady's corpse in a dark religious ritual.Summoning his graceless, brutally efficient right-hand man, Ollie Pitts, from the States to aid him in the investigation, Devlin sets out to unravel the secret behind the Red Angel's death and to recover her body for burial before it can be further desecrated.In an enigmatic island world of perilous contradictions, Devlin and Pitts are sharks out of water, running afoul of a murderous high-level secret policeman, as well as fearsome palero "witch doctors" and their blood-chillingly potent black magic. And suddenly Devlin is being pulled deeper and deeper into a tangled net of greed, terror, and corruption, where his legendary street sense may not be enough to keep him breathing -- especially when a particularly lethal viper is thrown into the mix: a vengeful madman with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of killers in his pocket, who has come to Cuba to watch Paul Devlin die.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Tough New York detective Paul Devlin returns in William Heffernan's Edgar Award-winning mystery series, this time set in the secret voodoo culture that permeates Castro's Cuba.

In this latest adventure, Devlin must travel to Cuba in search of his lover's missing aunt, a doctor known as Cuba's "Red Angel" for her work with the poor. Devlin fears that a dangerous voodoo sect—the Abakua—have murdered the Red Angel and used her bones in a Nganga, a ceremonial cauldron capable of the darkest magic. But the truth leads Devlin on a far more complicated path, one that threatens to stir up ghosts better left alone.

Navigating a fascinating web of Cuban politics, voodoo, and even the Miami mafia, Red Angel is William Heffernan—and Paul Devlin—in top form.

FROM THE CRITICS

New York Times Book Review

Skillfully entertaining.

Washington Post Book World

Heffernan is a master. Flawlessly plotted, seamlessly written.

Publishers Weekly

Edgar Award-winner Heffernan's strong new entry in his series featuring New York City detective Paul Devlin, last seen in Winter's Gold (1997), opens with a bang--a mob shooting in Manhattan. Later, when Devlin's lover, Adrianna Mendez, learns that her Aunt Maria, a Cuban doctor, is in a Havana hospital, Devlin drops the mob case and accompanies Adrianna to Cuba. There they discover that Maria, a popular folk heroine called the Red Angel and a Castro confidante, is dead and her body missing. As officials from two state security agencies monitor the search for Maria's corpse, Devlin calls in his assistant, Ollie Pitts, for back up. Their investigation leads into the mysterious and dangerous world of Afro-Cuban religion, especially the violent Abakua secret society. But don't forget those New York mobsters. This is a very political book, with Heffernan's complex plot weaving together the Mafia with greedy U.S. and Cuban government officials. Although Devlin and Pitts are standard issue, as are the mobsters, the Cuban characters are well-drawn and attractive, even when slippery. Heffernan also does a superb job explaining the varieties of Cuban religious experience, the Cuban sensibility and the ominous shadows of a rigid police state, though at times such explanations slow down the action. Agent, Gloria Loomis. (Dec.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

New York City special investigative detective Paul Devlin leaves behind an apparent gang war to help Adrianna, his Cuban American lover, with a family problem in Cuba. Only after arriving do they discover the death of Adrianna's aunt--widely known in Cuba as a heroine of the Revolution--and learn that members of a voodoo cult have stolen her body. With the assistance of a local policeman and Devlin's New York partner, Devlin and Adrianna struggle against the machinations of the Cuban secret police and others to uncover the truth. Deeply involving, expertly detailed, and strategically plotted, the latest Devlin mystery from Edgar Award-winning Heffernan is a real attention grabber. Highly recommended for most collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 8/00.] Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

After two outings, Heffernan (Cityside, 1999, etc.) summons veteran NYPD Inspector Paul Devlin from hiatus, but then, willy-nilly, whisks him from the Big Apple, where he's done his best work, to Castro's Cuba, where Devlin's lover, the beautiful Adrianna, goes to claim the body of her favorite aunt, Maria, killed in a Havana auto accident. When they arrive there's no body to claim, and no accident either. Nor, for that matter, was Aunt Maria an ordinary auntie. As the Red Angel, she was a hero of the Revolution, a close ally of Castro's beloved by the Cuban populace as the result of a life devoted to good works. An enigmatic cop, Major Martinez, is the source of most of this intelligence. His opposite is the evil Colonel Cabrera, of the secret police, who arranged Aunt Maria's fatal accident and hid her body, though he claims to be searching for it. Cabrera is in cahoots with"John the Boss" Rossi and other Mafia figures to undermine the government, returning Cuba to that halcyon time when rampant racketeering lined the pockets of a cooperative bureaucracy. So what's really going on here? Something (though not a whole lot) to do with the Mafia, and gambling, and drugs, and a little bit of voodoo—and enough tedious backstory and superfluous tourist info to bog down a much more substantial narrative. In the absence of a strong storyline, Devlin and company flounder as pathetically as Florida-bound Cubans. The result is almost as much unsatisfactory travelogue as unsatisfactory thriller.