When American journalist Matt Sullivan arrives in Havana in the spring of 2003, he’s carrying a second-hand wedding dress, a suitcase filled with pots, pans, cutlery and appliances, and the expectation that his Cuban girlfriend, Yarmi, whom he hasn’t seen in a year, will be there to meet him. But Yarmi is not at the airport, and Matt soon learns why: she’s dead.

Discovering who murdered Yarmi, and why, takes Matt, and readers of “Death Comes In Through the Kitchen,” on a wild ride through the streets, markets, restaurants, bars, hotels and police departments of Havana at the turn of the 21st century. Looking for Yarmi’s killer, we are immersed in the pleasures and difficulties of Cuban culture in the last years of Fidel Castro’s presidency, a time and place author Teresa Dovalpage knows well.

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