After Havana

From Publishers Weekly
Set in Cuba during the final months of the Batista regime, Fleming's densely populated second novel is packed with color, violence and history, but the action is sporadic and the narrative meanders. In 2002's The Ivory Coast, a white jazz musician named Deacon ran into some trouble in Las Vegas; now, three years later, he's going by the name of Peter Sloan, working at the Tropicana Hotel in Havana and mooning after his lost love, the beautiful Anita. Coincidentally, Anita is visiting Havana with her current paramour, real estate magnate Nick Calloway. Other characters from The Ivory Coast, including Sloan's benefactor, casino owner Mo Weiner, an associate of mobster Meyer Lansky, mingle with numerous new characters, among them conflicted Luis Cardoso, a Cuban security agent repelled by his government's cruelty; enigmatic Scarfioti, an American government informer; and many revolutionaries, including saintly Carlos "El Gato" Delgado, an associate of Castro, and Nilsa, a female freedom fighter. When Anita is kidnapped by the revolutionaries, Sloan, Calloway and Cardoso set out for the Sierra Maestra with the ransom. A climactic airport gunfight seals the fates of the entire cast. Double crosses and misunderstandings drive this many-layered novel, which is an ambitious near miss. Fleming's evocation of sultry Havana, insight into Cuban politics and society, and exhilarating action scenes are overwhelmed by all the characters who muse and reminisce too readily. As Delgado notes, a "certain amount of self-reflection was a fine thing.... Too much reflection made for poor revolutionaries." It makes for uneven novels, too.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
Deacon, the Chet Baker-like trumpet player who starred in Fleming's debut novel, The Ivory Coast (2002), is back, hiding out in Havana after the Vegas fiasco that ended the earlier novel. His new name, Peter Sloan, may have given him a measure of anonymity, but it hasn't helped a bit with the burden of his past, especially the loss of his great love, Anita--who kick-starts the action here when she walks into the one gin joint in all the world where Sloan happens to be blowing his trumpet. From there, Fleming takes us on a furious tour of 1958 Havana--bars, gangsters, movie stars, and revolutionaries--leading up to a climax in the Sierra Maestre, in which apolitical Sloan must barter with one of Castro's lieutenants for Anita's life. Turn to Jose Latour's Havana World Series [BKL N 15 03] if you want a more-textured, less-superficial look at 1950s Cuba, but Fleming's version, a kind of TV-movie take on the topic, makes diverting beach reading for those who can't resist the allure of guayaberra shirts and cafe con leche. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
“A delicious crime novel set in Cuba during the last days before Castro...splendid.”--Chicago Sun-Times

“Amorality run riot, but Fleming does an expert job of glossing it over and dressing it up: rousing entertainment.”--Kirkus Reviews

"The Ivory Coast was a great mystery...After Havana is even better...[a] terrific book.” --The Globe & Mail (Toronto)

“Fleming will have a difficult time keeping the quality as high as After Havana.”--Midwest Book Review

“A furious tour.”--Booklist



Book Description
An epic and explosive novel of Cuba in 1958, After Havana is the story of the nightclubs, revolutionaries, and secret police forces in the sour twilight of the Batista empire. Sloan is a white American horn player with a bruised past and a wounded heart. Anita is the mixed-race beauty who will recapture his love and spark a manhunt through the streets of the city and into the heart of Castro’s rebel-held Sierre Maestra mountains. Carlos Delgado is the famed rebel Communist leader, having secretly returned to his homeland. And Cardoso is the haunted secret police agent assigned to hunt Delgado and cripple the revolution.



About the Author
Charles Fleming is the author of the novel The Ivory Coast, as well as the nonfiction book High Concept. He is also the coauthor of the New York Times bestselling titles Three Weeks in October, The Goomba’s Guide to Life, and The Goomba Book of Love. Fleming lives with his family in Los Angeles, California.



Buy from Amazon     Compare Prices

Havana, with the Batista regime crumbling, is the setting for Fleming's well-made sequel (after Ivory Coast, 2002) about love among the ruins. Pete Deacon may drink too much and think too little, but there's no malice in him. If he ever bothered to articulate a moral imperative, it would take the form of: Don't hurt anyone you don't absolutely have to. In fact, Pete cares about only two things: his trumpet and his woman, except that the beautiful Anita isn't his any longer. After certain disruptive events in Las Vegas (recounted in Ivory Coast), she's been appropriated, in turn, by a mobster and a tycoon: powerful men with aggressive appetites and sufficient mercenaries to guard against frustration. Now, Pete's in Havana, has been for three years, hiding from an assortment of enemies, yearning for his lost love, and experiencing the seductive if debauched atmosphere of a betrayed Cuba buckling at the knees. He's changed his name to Sloan ("Deacon was a guy with trouble behind him"); swapped his trumpet for the coronet ("which was almost a trumpet"), and is blowing it hot with a pretty good jazz band at the glitzy Tropicana. And then one night, of all the casinos in town, in walks Anita on the arm of Nick Calloway, the handsome, hard-edged tycoon with a surprising soft spot. It isn't that he merely covets Anita, he adores her with an intensity matching Pete's. Thus, a triangle: Anita and Pete, star-crossed in the great tradition, and the Gatsbylike Calloway. When Anita is kidnapped by rebels and hurried off into Fidel's hills, an ad hoc band of very strange bedfellows forms itself into an ostensible rescue party. And then suddenly the hills are alive with secret agendas. Amorality runriot, but Fleming does an expert job of glossing it over and dressing it up: rousing entertainment. Agent: David Vigliano


Buy from Barnes & Noble     Compare Prices