Overview
Picking up where Black Heat, the first installment of the Nina Halligan trilogy, left off, The Big Mango takes the reader to the tropical island-nation of Misericordia. A recent popular uprising, led by local folk hero, Father Pierre-Pierre Bernard, provided the island's poor mulatto masses with a rare moment of freedom. Less skilled in making decisions than in weighing the merits of each position, "the Hamlet of the Caribbean" cowered in the face of the harsh realities of political life on the island and was soon deposed to exile in the U.S. by a right-wing military coup.
Enter Nina Halligan, the headstrong, street-savvy protagonist of Norman Kelley's triology. An activist in the African-American community in New York, the private investigator has a nose for scandal and corruption. With the brutal murder and public defamation of her close friend, Michael Debord, an insider in the administration of U.S. President Jeffrey Benton, Nina is persuaded to head south to find the killer and return Bernard to power.
The real fireworks begin the moment Nina arrives in Misericordia, where she soon learns that the real threat to the island's security is her old nemesis, Oscar Peltrano (a.k.a. Nate Ford), and a vicious team of corporate mercenaries. As the novel progresses and the body count increases, Nina manages to enlist the assistance of a motley crew of political subversives, including a voluptuous local nightclub diva named La Bomba, and Esperanza, a gregarious innkeeper with "a little something extra." As the novel spins toward its explosive conclusion, Nina and her new friends wage a bloody and costly war against Peltrano and his henchmen to avenge their loss and return the island to its people.
Norman Kelley is a freelance journalist, author, and producer at WBAI 99.5 FM (Pacifica Radio). He has written for the Black Star News, New Politics, Black Renaissance/Noir, The Bedford Stuyvesant Current, and Word.com, and has also written op-ed pieces for Newsday.