welcome to between the cover summer series where we're celebrating South Florida authors I'm Anne boock and joining me is awardwinning author Raquel V Rees with her latest book Barbacoa bomba and betrayal it's the third in her Caribbean Kitchen mystery series Raquel the third in in the the series and in the series we have amateur sleuth SL cooking show star SL Anthropologist her name is Miriam kones and who is she so exactly that Miriam kones she is a food Anthropologist she is also a mother um and uh in book one she has moved from New York to back to Miami um that's where her uh husband is from and in the first one she encounters um a little bit of um Fish Out of Water because she's no longer in hiia which is where she grew up she's in Coral Shores which doesn't really exist down here in South Florida people don't worry um I combined a couple of little towns um but uh she has to find her footing again and so that's what happens in the first book um and uh she uh uses her anthropology degree and her love of food specializing in the Caribbean um to uh talk about um a lot of different issues and sometimes it goes into solving the mystery solving the mystery these are what we would call a cozy culinary mystery Miriam is a breath of fresh air so thank you for her she is a Latina character you don't find a lot in in the Cozy mystery genre no not that not that many um in the amateur sleuth cozy mystery you certainly don't find them um sometimes you find a pi there's was a great series um out of the early 2000s um set in Miami um that had a Latina Pi but um yeah mine might be the first I'm not sure at least uh traditionally published and um I was really excited to write her because I'm Latina and I I wanted uh to to represent um that in my writing uh she's Cuban American and uh she studies the Caribbean so I get to talk about all the different cultures and I also get to talk about Latin America and I get to talk about Miami which Miami is the gateway to the Caribbean absolutely and and she even uses a little Spanglish in in your books not a little she absolutely does you know that's the thing you know when you live in a metropolitan City and especially a Port City where you have so many different cultures you know you're going to hear those different languages and you know some people are bilingual some people are multilingual and speak different languages and so I like to Pepper that into my writing to keep it contemporary and keep it real are are you a cook because you're well versed in in all of these culinary traditions and and cultural dishes you know um I appreciate food okay and I and I certainly uh love to watch uh you know other people prepare it and I love to read about it but I would much definitely prefer to be at a restaurant in my kitchen oh a girl after my own heart thank you so much as you said books one and two set in in Miami the third one starts there but then and I'm not going to give a whole lot away but because of a of a Christmas gift yes we go on on a little trip we go to Dominican Republic Dominican by well we go to to Puerto Rico we got to Puerto Ric by way of by way of Dominican Dominican Republic you obviously know San Juan very well am I correct yes I lived in Puerto Rico for a little while okay yeah and I spent quite a lot of time in Old San well and I I say that because this is not only a travel Journey that Miriam is taking but almost a historical lesson not lesson Journey for us as well but I hope so I mean that's my intention when I write these things I do quite a bit of research um a lot of it I I I am using because I have been there and and lived it or I'm familiar with that you know in in some of the other ones I I mention um quite a bit of uh Haitian Cuisine because because I live in Miami and there's so much H and Cuisine there but specifically about Puerto Rico you know Puerto Rico is um a commonwealth of the United States um but it's treated as a colony and a lot of people don't understand what that is so of course I've taken the opportunity to put some of that history in there first of all this old sanan is over 500 years old it has you know ballast Stone streets it has gorgeous architecture uh I love to be able to talk about those things I love to be able to talk about the history of those things but you know some of what's going on with Puerto Rico gets into the plot of this story and um we won't give it away we're not giving it away but it is handled beautifully and thank you for putting in the historical elements as well and you feel like like you're there I I'm curious sometimes I feel like cozy mysteries in general are underappreciated I agree why um well you know it might be in the um the the Cozy people don't quite understand what that is and they think it's uh light and fluffy like a light and fluffy uh blanket um uh and and some of them are for sure uh you know I think it's the same like with a romance you read a romance and you're going to get a happy ever after or at least a happy for now the same with a cozy you're gonna get a puzzle or an amateur sleuth you're a traditional sometimes we call it you're gonna get a puzzle and it's going to get solved and Justice is going to be served I mean that is a delight right there when I go to a when I go to my go-to reads I want to know that you know it's tied up with a nice bow at the end Justice is served the right people get put away and the good ones you know get to come up to the top um you know and and uh maybe it's in The Branding maybe we need to change the branding from cozy to something else but who knows I know and I've read this before that you had mentioned your growing up was something Ain to I Love Lucy you a redheaded mother and a a southern mom and and a a Cuban father Yes yes tell me a little about that absolutely it was just that and you know um when I uh this was when I grew up um we didn't uh have as many options as we do now with streaming and we had rerun and after school um I saw I Love Lucy on reruns and um I recognized that there was another family that was like mine you know and that was really kind of the only one that was there in when I was growing up um and and I wanted to do the same with uh the subg genre that I love you know I love traditional uh Mysteries I love amateur sleuths but I never saw someone that looked like me and so I wanted to give that to the readers and so that's the reason why I started writing but it came from the fact that as a young person I looked up and said oh there's a family that's like me there's a family that you know sometimes there's miscommunication because there's two different languages going on in the home yeah what would you tell that little girl today um it's going to be okay it's going to be okay things are going to get better and what were the books that you gravitated to as a child um you know uh we didn't have uh quite the plethora of middle-grade and YA books that these kids these days are lucky enough to have so um when I was going to the library and I'm an only child so the library was my best friend um uh the Librarians directed me to uh Agatha Christie so I I certainly read Agatha Christie but I didn't see myself represented in them um so I graduated from Agatha Christie pretty quickly I think maybe I only read about four or five of them and fell in love with El Elizabeth Peters now Elizabeth Peters wrote some great series and um they all dealt with different cultures you know you probably know her uh Egyptian ones you know and uh but then there was another one that was um set in the art world and always had uh you know a cast of characters that uh you know spoke different languages and came from different cultures and and that's really where I fell in love with uh Mysteries libraries were my best friends too so we have that in common raeli Rees is the author of Barbacoa bomba and betrayal this has been such a pleasure thank you so much for spending your time with me thank you for inviting me I'm Anne boock please join me on the next between the covers [Music]