<DIV><P><B>A </B><B><I>New York Times Book Review</I> Editors' Choice</B></P><P> </P><P>Havana, 1957.  On the same day that the Mafia capo Umberto Anastasia is assassinated in a barber's chair in New York, a hippopotamus escapes from the zoo and is shot and killed by its pursuers.  Assigned to cover the zoo story, Joaquin Porrata, a young Cuban journalist, finds himself embroiled in the mysterious connections between the hippo's death and the mafioso's in this intoxicating story of murder, mobsters, and, finally, love.  </P></DIV>