First Reviews Up For Peggy Blair's The Beggar's Opera

You may have heard read my post a few months back about a friend, Peggy Blair, and her upcoming debut novel The Beggar's Opera. It's a gritty detective mystery set in Havana, Cuba, and will be in bookstores in February (in North America and Europe, I believe).

Here's the blurb, in case you haven't seen it yet:

In beautiful, crumbling Old Havana, Canadian detective Mike Ellis hopes the sun and sand will help save his troubled marriage. He doesn’t yet know that it’s dead in the water—much like the little Cuban boy last seen begging the Canadian couple for a few pesos on the world famous Malecon. For Inspector Ricardo Ramirez, head of the Major Crimes Unit of the Cuban National Revolutionary Police, finding his prime suspect isn’t a problem—Cuban law is. He has only seventy-two hours to secure an indictment and prevent a vicious killer from leaving the island. But Ramirez also has his own troubles to worry about. He’s dying of the same dementia that killed his grandmother, an incurable disease that makes him see the ghosts of victims of unsolved murders. As he races against time, the dead haunt his every step ...

Sounds delish, right? Penguin have given away some advance copies, and the first reviews are in. Check out what other readers thought here.