That Time in Caracas

Cuban social worker Laira, Valáiria Hernández (named for Vladimir Lenin), is an outspoken divorcée who is proud of her country. She goes to Venezuela to interview Cuban volunteers for a psychosocial satisfaction survey in That Time in Caracas. She learns the Metro, travels to several other cities, and meets journalists, film stars and a host of other Venezuelans with whom she solves a mystery or two.

That Time in Caracas is the third in the Valáiria Hernández Mystery series that also includes That Time in Havana and That Time in New York. An outspoken Cuban social worker who is proud of her country; she is a Cuban most folks in the United States may not get to meet. Laira (Valáiria Hernández named for Vladimir Lenin) is befriended by an ambitious neophyte journalist, who embroils her in her attempts to ferret out a movie star's secret. Along the way, she meets a number of Venezuelans from street sellers to government types, business people to film stars, travels to other cities, learns the Metro, and completes the satisfaction survey of Cuban volunteers, and in the end solves a couple of murders.

Carolina Cositore is a political activist and writer, who has also been an editor, teacher, journalist and social worker, as well as mother and grandmother. She is an inveterate traveler, who had the unique opportunity to work in Havana, Cuba and liked it so well, she stayed for a decade. An avid mystery reader, she became so frustrated with the many right leaning, even racist stories, that she decided to write a more progressive one herself. She uses her activist experiences as well as the 2005 and 2006 Cuban and Venezuelan Zeitgeist when Fidel and Hugo Chávez dominated the scene.