South Florida is a fascinating place, and Miami is a fascinating city. It is often called the capital of Latin America, and with good reason: the Spanish-speaking population continues to grow, salsa dominates the airwaves, and a visit into Little Havana is a cultural experience like few others in America. There is little surprise, I think, in why so many novels are now set in this American Rivera, with its heady mix of drugs, money, and often opposing cultures. No place in America offers as diverse an experience; few other places seem so beautiful and yet deadly beneath the surface, a Venus fly-trap disguised as a tourist destination. It makes excellent fodder for amused writers, be it Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiaasen, or even Dave Barry.

James Grippando is no late-comer to the Miami binge: Hear No Evil is his ninth book, and features Miami criminal attorney Jack Swyteck in what promises to be his most explosive case ever. Lindsey Hart is a beautiful woman with a problem: she is about to be charged with her husband's murder, and she wants Swyteck to represent her. As a criminal lawyer, Jack isn't adverse to taking her case, until he learns that the crime occurred at Guantanamo Bay, the American military base on Cuban soil. As Jack puts it, he has "absolutely no experience" in military cases, and whoever defends Lindsey should "know how to work his way through military red tape."

Lindsey doesn't agree. She wants Jack, and she says she has a reason: her son, the son she and her now-deceased husband adopted some ten years ago, is actually Jack's biological son, a son he didn't know he had. She wants Jack to represent her because she knows he will do his best to prevent the fearsome prospect of the young boy's mother ending up in jail: "And if you don't help me find the man who killed him, his mother could go to jail for the rest of her life."

Well, Jack takes the case. He feels he has no choice, although as he confides in his friend and investigator Theo Knight, he has a dilemma: if Lindsey's guilty, he wants her to go to jail because he doesn't want his son raised by a murderer. If she isn't guilty, he doesn't want her to go to jail, since that would devastate the boy. But how to know, especially when it seems his client is playing somewhat coy with the truth?

Lindsey's husband - Oscar Pintado - was Cuban-American; his father Alejandro was among those who fled Cuba in the wake of Castro's revolution. Like many Cuban-Americans, Alejandro is ardently anti-Castro, the president of an organization devoted to trying to help Cubans fleeing Cuba. He also made a fortune in America, and thinks that his wealth - and the trusts he set up for each of his children - gave Lindsey a motive for murder. As Jack investigates the case, he finds it difficult to cope with Lindsey's prevarications, which often lead to difficult factual inconsistencies in her story. And his trip to Cuba to interview witnesses proves problematic when he is brought before a Cuban colonel who calmly informs him that there is a Cuban soldier who can corroborate at least a portion of Lindsey's testimony.