Sweet Mary

by Liz Balmaseda

Book Overview

Dulce Maria "Mary" Guevara is a woman with nothing left to lose. Wrongly accused of being a cocaine queen, she has lost her job, her reputation, and--worst of all--custody of her son. Even after the charges are dropped, suspicion lingers. Desperate to get it all back, she takes what she considers the only path open to her: she goes on the hunt for the real drug queen. Unfortunately, the one person she is sure will be able to help her is the one person...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1416542973
• ISBN13: 9781416542971
• Release Date: June 2010
• Publisher: Atria Books
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Another Great Florida Writer

Having spent many earlier years in Florida, I am always eager to read a new writer who uses Florida as a setting. I've already discovered three favorites, Carl Hiassen, Jeff Lindsay (Dexter) and Tim Dorsey. Now there is also Liz Balmaseda who enters the fray with a new thriller about a woman who lost everything who wants to get justice for herself by finding the real cocaine queen in South Florida. There is a romantic element too as she can only move forward by making contact with her ex-fiance. This is written in the first person which some readers do not like. However, if used properly in a mystery or thriller, it can draw intense focus into and upon the protagonist in the story, as it does here. Ironically, when Ross MacDonald wrote his novels centered in Florida they were much sleepier murders which took place in an essentially non-violent Florida. Decades later, crime issues forth like a constant stream from Florida and gives rich mining rights to all these journalists and writers who now inhabit Florida. In a way, I wish they had not found such a gold mine of criminal inspiration. But indeed Florida is yielding many great crime writers. It is easy to believe that Balmaseda won two Pulitzers for her journalistic efforts. Try her novel.

GREAT STORY.....GREAT HEROINE.........!!!!

When the Feds raid the modest home of Miami realtor Dulce Maria "Mary" Guevara and arrest her in a case of mistaken identity, her life is turned upside down. Accused of being sought-after drug trafficker Maria Portilla, Mary finds her son taken from her with her ex-husband seeking sole custody; her employer/mentor deserts her and suggests that she "take some time off," and her fellow PTA members no longer wish to be in her company. With her entire life under a cloud of suspicion and the Fed's official statement implying the she was released from jail on a technicality, Mary realizes that her only recourse is to find the real Maria Portilla and bring her to justice. Challenges along the way include: staying alive, and dodging the charms of ex-love and bad boy Joe Pratt. With a kick-ass attitude born from the desire to save her family, her career and her good name, Mary secures the help of best friend and fellow tough girl Gina....to find the real drug trafficker and return Sweet Mary's life to some semblance of normal. A real pageturner...you can almost see the palmtrees swaying as you read, and you can certainly smell the ocean. Sit on your deck with a nice margarite and sink your teeth into this one. DYB

Balmaseda's beautifully orchestrated first novel is also a noir journey of self-discovery

Dulce Maria "Mary" Guevara is wrongfully accused of being a drug trafficker, for which she loses her income and son. The "queen of bad timing" becomes a novice realtor in a real-estate bust and desperately needs the Big Bucks commission of a Texas millionaire on the sale of a house that is "over-the-top style of the cocaine-era nouveau riche," complete with a "stripper's pole, as if the Scarface cheese hadn't been enough." Mary swallows pride when asked to stand next to the pole. "I grabbed the pole with one arm and swung myself around. That's right: I swung on the damn pole." Flashing back to age nine on a double dare, climbing a coconut palm without gym shorts, she justifies clinching the commission to support her son. "So this was a tree, not a stripper's pole. I tucked the hem of my skirt between my thighs to prevent a peep show and I tightened my legs around the pole. I slowly curled myself back up, wrapped my arms around the pole, and leaped off. I adjusted my skirt, slipped on my sandals, and casually walked back to the astounded cowboy. I leaned down toward the bed. `Let's make a deal, you and me,' I said. `I'll take it,' he said. `I'll take it, Sweet Mary.'" "I should have come to expect that no matter how hard I work, how much I achieve, how generous I try to be, I will always be the outsider in [my parents'] house...but when crunch time is near, mine is the only name they all remember. In times like that, my initials might as well be ATM." When asked by "Mami" for money to help her Loser-with-a-capital-L brother with child support, Mary refuses. When her young nephew runs to his favorite aunt, Mary leaves a $5,000 check, not for Loser but for the right reason. When young, Mary never received gifts without "plastic security tags still attached." With an Elían González-like home invasion, DEA agents SWAT-storm Mary's modest house. In Miami, Spanish names are dangerously common; 27 pages of the surname "Martinez," three with "José." Ex-husband Tony gets full custody of their son, Max. At the custody hearing, Mary observes: "At the root of it all was the lingering doubt over my true identity. The judge herself inferred so in her babblings from the bench." Realism lacks in some instances. Mary keeps her cool and responds with questions to grueling DEA interrogation instead of answers. A federal prosecutor claims birth certificates easily can be forged. Elliot Casey is "the rock star defense lawyer I had seen on cable news programs... certainly out of my price range." Casey didn't object to the alleged forgery and obtained an authenticated certificate to prove that Colombia-born Maria Guevara Portilla was not his client. The only prosecution witness is a bumbling Texas lieutenant who identifies a photo of Casey's daughter as Portilla, the "drug queenpin." Inconclusive fingerprints get the case dismissed. With charges dropped, a realtor linked to drug trafficking is still guilty in the minds of wag-tongues. In Atlanta's 1996 Olympic Park

Sweet Mary is F-A-B-U-L-O-U-S!!!

Realtor Mary Guevara of Miami is mistaken for notorious drug queen Mary Portilla AKA La Reina. Dragged off to jail in shackles, her son in the custody of Children and Families, Mary has a hard time convincing the authorities that she isn't the hardened criminal they're looking for. However, with a good lawyer and sane judge on her side, Mary is released but by that time her opportunistic ex-husband who is married to a local politician who needs to be seen as a family person has gone to family court and gotten custody of her 8-year-old son, Max. Plus, Mary is now seen as a pariah. People are still wary of her, wondering if it could be true and she really is secretly a drug queen. She has to do something to (1) Get her son out of the clutches of her ex and his ruthless wife and (2) Regain her stellar reputation. So Mary goes in search of Bad Mary. But first she needs the help of someone who is familiar with the criminal element in Miami: the first man she'd ever loved, Joe Pratts. She left him years ago when she thought he would never change his hood ways. Now she needs his help and unfortunately for her it only takes a few minutes in his presence to realize she's still attracted to him. Thus begins three days of adventure for Mary. Can she find a woman who is so good at hiding that the authorities can't even find her? Well, maybe the authorities just weren't as desperate as Sweet Mary! I can see how this book was a screenplay first. It reads like a rollicking good action-adventure. I hope it does make it onto the Big Screen.

A non-stop thrill ride

What Liz Balmaseda does so well as a journalist she does with the characters in "Sweet Mary." She breathes life into Dulce Maria Guevara, the people who come in contact with her, and into a story that unfolds with the tenacity of a Summer blockbuster. "Sweet Mary" and her heroine come right at you at break-neck speed and it's all you can do to hang on. If there was ever a literary character who embodied all the assets of girl power, Dulce Maria is it. Think Angelina Jolie in "Tomb Raider" crashing the set of "Bad Boys," and add a dash of mango sours. This book is tailor-made for the big screen, with one action-packed scene after another. But "Sweet Mary" also has a head and a heart -- the writer is, after all, a two-time Pulitzer-prize winning reporter -- and that's what makes Balmaseda's debut novel stand apart.