Charles Fleming - After Havana (2004)
One of the hardest things to do as a writer is capture the flavor of a distant time or place with such resonance and authenticity that the reader is transported to that setting with little or no thought that the book was actually written in the here and now.
Los Angeles writer Charles Fleming has managed to do so splendidly in After Havana, a delicious crime novel set in Cuba during the last days before Castro.
The good times are rolling for Fulgencio Batista and his cronies and the American mob is getting fat from their casinos. Ordinary Cubans, though, are suffering in poverty, living fearfully under a brutal dictatorship.
Such circumstances create fertile ground for a crime writer, and Fleming cultivates it well. His plot, featuring a down-at-the-heels horn player, various revolutionaries and a rich American with romantic troubles, is unfortunately unable to match the depth of his setting and characters. His prose is so good, though, that you probably won't notice.
Posted by David J. Montgomery in Book Reviews | Permalink
