Juan Lopez Bauza’s novel Misa de coronación (Novela negra) [Crowning Ceremony (Noir)] was published this week (Planeta, August 2025). Planeta describes: “A ritual murder and an approaching hurricane. About to turn in his badge, Lope Laguna must solve the most brutal case of his career. [. . .] In the heart of the Caribbean, amidst orishas and assassins, one man stands between chaos and redemption.” The book will be launched on September 3, at 6:00pm, at The Bookmark, San Patricia Plaza, in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico.
Description: A detective novel in which Lope, pursuing leads for what he believes will be his last case before his retirement, comes face to face with the black magic enveloping the island.
Growing older and starting to resent his body’s aches and pains, Lope knows that his job as a detective for the San Juan Police is coming to an end. He hates his corrupt supervisor and the violence he confronts in the streets, day in and day out. The only thing he wants is to canoe and spend time with his 12-year-old daughter, whom he sees less after his divorce. What he cannot fathom is that the multiple homicide that he’s now investigating will take him all over the island in less than a week, followed—among others—by the heavy, grey clouds of an impending, and potentially devastating, hurricane.
Very soon, Lope will find himself under the dark spell of a babalawo with a thirst for revenge. Amidst orisha rituals, the stifling Caribbean heat, and the gritty underground world of drug-dealers and hitmen, Lope will have to keep his wits about him if he wants to make it out alive.
Juan López Bauzá was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, in 1966. He is a writer, essayist, translator, and editor, with a bachelor’s degree in political science from Colgate University in New York. He published his first short stories, La sustituta y otros cuentos, in 1997 under the imprint of the University of Puerto Rico Press. This book received the Puerto Rico Pen Club Award for best fiction book published that year in the country. His short stories have been included in the anthologies Mal(h)ab(l)ar, Nuevos caníbales, and En el ojo del huracán. Additionally, one of his stories has been included in literary reading series for Puerto Rican schools and in the Anthology of 20th-Century Puerto Rican Literature.
For more information, see https://www.planetadelibros.com/libro-misa-de-coronacion-spanish-edition/423894 and https://www.amazon.com/-/es/coronaci%C3%B3n-Novela-Crowning-Ceremony-Spanish/dp/6073928696