Blood in the cut

A Cuban American ex-con fights to hold his family together in Nodarse's standout debut. After being released from prison following a three-year drug sentence, Iggy Guerra returns to Miami's Little Havana neighborhood with hopes of reconnecting with his family and putting the past behind him. With his mother's recent death in an auto accident, however, plus his father's mounting debt, his younger brother's intentions of quitting high school, and the family butcher shop on the brink of closing under pressure from an arrogant competitor, Iggy finds his family in shambles. All responsibility falls on him, it seems, to fix the mess. Things become even more complicated when Iggy's father is arrested for butchering illegally killed game for an unscrupulous Everglades rancher. Then Iggy discovers that his mother's death may not have been an accident, and he's compelled to seek street justice against her killer without ending up back behind bars. Nodarse draws taut suspense from intermingling the fate of the butcher shop, Iggy's father's shady dealings, and the mystery of his mother's death, tying everything together with a stirring conclusion. He enhances the action with indelible descriptions of the Florida setting that underline the state's intoxicating blend of beauty and danger. S.A. Cosby fans, take note: this jagged Southern neo-noir is not to be missed. Agent: Ian Bonaparte, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (June)

A young Cuban American man just released from prison returns home only to stumble into a world of illegal hunting and murder. You will need a strong stomach to enter the brutal world of game hunting, illegal slaughterhouses, and human violence depicted in Nodarse's first novel. Set on the darkest edges of modern-day Miami, the book follows the path of Ignacio "Iggy" Guerra, who has just been released from prison after having been arrested for selling oxycodone he stole from his mother's pharmacy. Now, three years later, Iggy is returning home to a working-class Cuban American neighborhood that is significantly different from what it was when he left. His beloved mother is dead, the victim of a hit-and-run driver. The pharmacy is gone. His angry, embittered father is drinking too much and drowning in debt. A shiny new competitor is threatening his father's butcher shop, and when Iggy finds his father alone one night, covered in blood, he really begins to worry. What exactly is he butchering? His father won't talk, but his connection to a shady big-game hunter leads Iggy into a dangerous mission in the Everglades--and to the truth about what happened to his mother. Nodarse creates an unsettling atmosphere and sheds some light on real Miami problems, the cost of gentrification among them, but the book's overwhelming machismo doesn't allow for much interesting character development. Villains talk like cartoon bad guys, and the question of how far Iggy will go for vengeance falls flat because the reader is never invested enough in his redemption to care. The various mysteries fueling the story aren't all that hard to figure out, and a side plot involving a rogue animal activist develops too awkwardly to make much impact. Not even an impromptu street race through the Everglades can make up for the missteps. A bloody, macho redemption story that never quite takes off. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.