Havana [Paperback]

Hunter recreates the tension-filled jockeying for power and the no-holds-barred violence which accompany it by presenting a large cast of characters representing the various elements contending with each other for dominance in Havana. Earl Swagger, a former State Policeman from Arkansas and a Medal of Honor winner, has been hired to be bodyguard for the venal Congressman Harry Etheridge, who believes that American gangsters in Cuba are trying to muscle in on contracts for all the services at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay. Mob boss Meyer Lansky is colluding with American corporations which need cheap sugar, labor, and fruit. The Soviets have assigned a parolee from Siberia to "handle" Fidel Castro, whom they are trying to educate and groom for higher office. American Central Intelligence has set up shop in Havana, though various station officers have formed "off-campus" alliances which will leave them independently wealthy. The U.S. Navy, the Cuban secret police, especially a torturer who specializes in slitting eyeballs, and even Ernest Hemingway are involved in the action.

Concentrating almost exclusively on his plots, rather than his characters, most of whom are stereotypes, Hunter does a terrific job of juggling, keeping all the balls in the air. The pace never flags, and because the action takes place on a small island, where the characters could not help but interact and find their paths crossing, the improbabilities and coincidences, which would be distracting in a wider context, appear normal here. The six or seven subplots develop a fairly full picture of life on the island which feels realistic. Gruesome torture scenes, and a main character's desire for a final sort of vengeance seem geared more to film than fiction, though these are minor quibbles for a book which moves swiftly and smoothly from one crisis to the next as the reader, totally involved in the intricacies of Cuban political and social history, remains fully engaged in an exciting novel which is great fun to read. Mary Whipple

That all said, even sub par Hunter slaughters any other writers in the thriller world. As stark and explosive as his previous books, this also features more of the sardonic humour familiar to readers of Hunter's Pulitzer Prize winning movie criticism. Earl Swagger himself appears at times as a peripheral character, and occasionally suffers - appearing less stoical and taciturn as stolid and grumpy. But Hunter compensates with some other great characters: a wonderfully Machiavellian Meyer Lansky, a hilariously incompetent young Fidel Castro, plus fictional figures like bungling Mafia hitman Franke Carbine and sadistic Cuban torturer and gun-toting maniac Ojos Bellos. Best of all is the return of Frenchy Short, Earl's former protege gone bad, now a seductively amoral rising star at the CIA, and the new character of Speshnev, the Russian operative sent to protect Castro. Speshnev is in many ways a Russian Earl Swagger - a hardened veteran of a litany of wars, and man out of time, spurned by his booses at KGB, sprung from imprisonment for this thankless task. But in contrast to Earl, Speshnev appears charmingly cynical and hilariously laid-back. Diffident and slyly humourous, the Russian appears in stark relief to the occasionally stolid Earl. Indeed Speshnev is such a wonderful creation, perhaps Hunter should consider a novel focussed solely on this deceptively deadly agent, or maybe mixing him up with the compellingly complex Frenchy Short and his relentless rise through the CIA.

The Earl Swagger series seems now completely played out (barring prequels of his wartime exploits), and perhaps it would have been best to have left him at the searing conclsuion of 'Pale Horse Coming' (as Bob Lee should have been left with 'Black Light'). Hunter himself says he is writing a mysterious non-fiction work, anyway it is time this writer of unique talent stretched his wings.

A flawed work, but a nonetheless blissfully enjoyable one for all it's limitations. Stephen Hunter is, and will remain, among the best writers at work today, and the unrivalled master of the thriller world.