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Culture Shock: A Claire Aquila Mystery
“I want him out of my business and out of my life.”
When Barbara Vogel confided this to her friends in The Havens, a Florida retirement community, no one suspected that Barbara would soon lay dead in her home with a bullet wound in her chest. And that days later, an Hispanic laborer would be found dead with Barbara’s gun and jewelry in his possession.
Soon arrives anthropologist Claire Aguila, who a year before had helped solve murders in Mexico. She visits Claire’s parents in The Havens with her daughter, only to find that her father is a possible suspect in the Vogel murder. The family drama intensifies when Mexican Detective Roberto Salinas and Madge Carmichael arrive on the scene.
This unlikely reunion complicates Detective Davenport’s job as Claire and her companions become involved, and, once again, Madge proves to be a resourceful, if unconventional, sleuth.
While Davenport faces friction within his own team, Claire and her entourage seek to bridge the cultural divide between the comfortable world of the affluent residents and the world of those who make their lifestyle possible.
Culture Shock is the second mystery in the Claire Aguila series and is a stand-alone novel to Hull’s first mystery, Human Sacrifice.
Author Cindy Hull employs her skills as a professor of anthropology to make sharp observations of life in a gated retirement community in central Florida, where murder lurks just a golf cart drive away. Spot-on characters, the minutiae and paranoia of the gated lifestyle, and the racial profiling of The Havens’ Mexican workforce make this whodunnit an especially enjoyable mystery. — Robert Downes, author, Windigo Moon, The Wolf and The Willow
As Cindy Hull spins her absorbing whodunnit, set in a gated Florida retirement community rich with intrigue, she also asks us to consider who we are. More than a mystery, Culture Shock is a commentary on the fragile bubbles that 21st century Americans exist in, and what happens when they bump or burst. —Cari Noga, author, Sparrow Migrations, The Orphan Daughter
Dr. Cindy L. Hull is an anthropologist and Professor Emeritus from Grand Valley State University. Her research interests have taken her to Mexico, Micronesia, and rural Michigan. She has published two A Twenty-Year Journey with the Maya; and Chippewa A Community in Search of an Identity.
In retirement, Cindy has pursued her love of mystery novels by writing two murder mysteries, introducing her protagonist, Dr. Claire Aguila. Cindy’s first novel, Human Sacrifice, takes place in the Yucatán Peninsula, where she and her husband lived and studied among the Maya, Her newest mystery, Culture Shock, explores the mysterious world of the Florida retirement community.
Alas, Cindy has not succumbed to the allure of life in a retirement community. Instead, she happily resides with her husband in Traverse City, Michigan.
When Barbara Vogel confided this to her friends in The Havens, a Florida retirement community, no one suspected that Barbara would soon lay dead in her home with a bullet wound in her chest. And that days later, an Hispanic laborer would be found dead with Barbara’s gun and jewelry in his possession.
Soon arrives anthropologist Claire Aguila, who a year before had helped solve murders in Mexico. She visits Claire’s parents in The Havens with her daughter, only to find that her father is a possible suspect in the Vogel murder. The family drama intensifies when Mexican Detective Roberto Salinas and Madge Carmichael arrive on the scene.
This unlikely reunion complicates Detective Davenport’s job as Claire and her companions become involved, and, once again, Madge proves to be a resourceful, if unconventional, sleuth.
While Davenport faces friction within his own team, Claire and her entourage seek to bridge the cultural divide between the comfortable world of the affluent residents and the world of those who make their lifestyle possible.
Culture Shock is the second mystery in the Claire Aguila series and is a stand-alone novel to Hull’s first mystery, Human Sacrifice.
Author Cindy Hull employs her skills as a professor of anthropology to make sharp observations of life in a gated retirement community in central Florida, where murder lurks just a golf cart drive away. Spot-on characters, the minutiae and paranoia of the gated lifestyle, and the racial profiling of The Havens’ Mexican workforce make this whodunnit an especially enjoyable mystery. — Robert Downes, author, Windigo Moon, The Wolf and The Willow
As Cindy Hull spins her absorbing whodunnit, set in a gated Florida retirement community rich with intrigue, she also asks us to consider who we are. More than a mystery, Culture Shock is a commentary on the fragile bubbles that 21st century Americans exist in, and what happens when they bump or burst. —Cari Noga, author, Sparrow Migrations, The Orphan Daughter
Dr. Cindy L. Hull is an anthropologist and Professor Emeritus from Grand Valley State University. Her research interests have taken her to Mexico, Micronesia, and rural Michigan. She has published two A Twenty-Year Journey with the Maya; and Chippewa A Community in Search of an Identity.
In retirement, Cindy has pursued her love of mystery novels by writing two murder mysteries, introducing her protagonist, Dr. Claire Aguila. Cindy’s first novel, Human Sacrifice, takes place in the Yucatán Peninsula, where she and her husband lived and studied among the Maya, Her newest mystery, Culture Shock, explores the mysterious world of the Florida retirement community.
Alas, Cindy has not succumbed to the allure of life in a retirement community. Instead, she happily resides with her husband in Traverse City, Michigan.
379 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 5, 2022
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About the author
Cindy L. Hull
4 books7 followersI am a retired anthropologist who has lived and studied in Mexico and the Micronesian island of Ponape. I ahve always loved mystery novels, so in retirement I decided to write mysteries and as my first novel, I have used the Mayan world as my focus. I hope you enjoy Human Sacrfice.
I currenty live in Traverse City, Michigan.
I currenty live in Traverse City, Michigan.
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