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Havana Bay (Paperback)

by Martin Cruz Smith (Author) "A police boat directed a light toward tar-covered pilings and water, turning a black scene white ..." (more)
4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (20 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 464 pages
  • Publisher: Pan Books; New edition edition (5 May 2000)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0330340026
  • ISBN-13: 978-0330340021
  • Product Dimensions: 17.6 x 10.8 x 3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 211,875 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review
Russian detective Arkady Renko made his debut in Martin Cruz Smith's powerful 1981 novel Gorky Park. An enigmatic and complex character, he made further appearances in Polar Star and Red Square. In Havana Bay Renko has gone to Cuba to identify the body of an old colleague. It seems a simple enough task, but the putrefying corpse is unrecognisable as a human being and the authorities' insistence that he agree with their conclusions serves only to make Renko more stubborn. Soon it becomes apparent that his unexpected arrival is ruffling some powerful feathers. Finding himself in a strange limbo Renko slowly forms a bond with Detective Ofelia Osorio whose revolutionary zeal is tempered by her pragmatic intelligence. Unofficially investigating the case with Ofelia leads Renko to be gradually enmeshed in a world where conflicting cultures and the fallout from past events threaten to destroy what proves to be a deceptive calm. Martin Cruz Smith evokes beautifully the faded, colonial grandeur of Havana and its revolutionary legacy; its sense of a society whose engagement with history has left it outside of time. The pleasures of Havana Bay are of the slow-burning variety, but are all the more satisfying as a result. --Jonathan Crawford

Product Description
The body, what was left of it, was drifting in Havana Bay the morning Arkady arrived from Moscow. The Cubans insisted that the body was his friend Pribluda, but Arkady wasn't so sure. The Communist world has shrunk to Cuba. Havana is a city of empty stones and talking drums, Karl Marx and sharp machetes - not welcoming place if you're a Russian, particularly if you're a Russian investigating the death of another Russian. But Arkady is used to being unpopular. He's even used to losing friends. "Havana Bay" is the fourth novel to feature Arkady Renko. The previous three, "Gorky Park", "Polar Star", and "Red Square" are also available in Pan. "If there's more intoxicating and intriguing setting for a thriller than Moscow, Smith has found it in Havana. Sheer class", - "Mirror". "I hope a copy of this top-notch thriller reaches Castro as he wises up to the mobsters currently at his gate", - "Independent". "As in "Gorky Park", Cruz Smith is outstanding on background. The feel of Havana is sensuously rendered", - "Sunday Times".
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Customer Reviews

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4.3 out of 5 stars (20 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Steamy Intrigue in Sweltering Havana, 10 Jun 2001
By A Customer
This is the first of the Arkady Renko novels I have read, and buying it was influenced by the fact that I had spent time exploring Havana and its environs a short time before.

Summoned by an unsigned fax from what turns out to be an old hand at Havana's diminished Russian Embassy, detective Renko travels from mid-winter Moscow to subtropical January in Havana, to investigate the disappearance and death of a KGB operative and one-time associate. Both he and his drowned friend Pribluda are of a mindset unable to come to terms with life in public service in post-communist Russia.

With an almost bumbling manner and persistence reminiscent of a Slavonic Peter Faulk playing Columbo in the 1970's television series (in a black cashmire coat with a story of its own in place of a trench-coat), Renko finds himself an unwelcome and unpopular reminder to the Cuban police investigating the gruesome corpse washed up in Havana Bay, of Russia's once domineering influence over their affairs. And a threat to some shadowy individuals with their own agenda for change in this outwardly ramshackle island nation.

Martin Cruz Smith has captured many of the undercurrents that pervade society in modern Havana. They range from a crumbling political, economic and social system (to say nothing of crumbling buildings and crowded tenements), to the moonlighting, hustling, and sex-for-sale, that puts bread on Cuban tables in the way that the state's mediocre salaries do not. He captures too, the cameraderie of Cuban war vererans of Angola and Ethopia. The pervasiveness of African mysticism and music in Cuban life. And the combination of stoicism and sheer exhuberance that shine though in what Castro euphemistically calls the "special times", of no Russsian aid and an ongoing US embargo.

These ingredients are skillfully blended into a suspenseful tale that draws us into three hundred pages plus of the intrigue and double-dealing that swirl around a handful of well-drawn characters. Once into it, I found the book hard to put down. I'm sure it will make a good movie too, though it may be a little cerebral for current Hollywood tastes. All the better if it could be filmed on location. Conjo!

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars "What was it about violent death that was better than dreams?", 10 Dec 2006
By Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)   
This review is from: Havana Bay (Mass Market Paperback)
When the brooding and sometimes depressed Russian "hero," Arkady Renko, travels to Havana to investigate the gruesome death of a Russian colleague, his contact with the high energy Cubans does little to improve his view of life. Renko, who has been featured in four Cruz Smith novels, has been so anxious to escape from the corruption in Moscow, that he has paid his own way to Cuba for a break. Within a week, however, he is planning his suicide.

Forty years have elapsed since the Cuban Revolution raised and then dashed the hopes of the Cuban people, and corruption is rampant among the higher-ups in the Cuban police department and the government. The early affinity between the Cubans and the Russians has changed to outright enmity, and Renko finds his own life threatened by Cubans. Though as a Russian he is not supposed to investigate his friend Pribluda's death, he is unsatisfied with the inquest. Making the acquaintance of Ophelia Osorio, a police officer in the National Police, who believes him to be honest, he is sometimes able to gain important information.

Gradually, this complex story evolves into an investigation of much more than the death of one Russian. A sugar company, set up in Panama and involving high-ranking Cubans, some Chinese, and some Russians appears to be a shell in a get-rich-quick scheme. Several American radicals now living in Cuba are involved in this and other schemes, and as the action picks up, complicated by Santeria and Abakua religious practices and beliefs, Renko is brutally attacked, leaving him wondering if he will live long enough to get on the plane for Moscow that weekend.

Cruz Smith's ability to convey the atmosphere of Havana and to depict the mood of its inhabitants of all economic levels brings the story alive, and the contrasts between Renko's dour Russian character and that of the Cubans suggest that the alienation between the two countries may have involved more than the Russians' failure to support Cuba financially. The action, slow to start and sometimes graphically violent, ends in a dramatic grand finale, including several crosses and double-crosses and leading to the reader's new view of what was really going on behind the scenes. Though the action is not as tight as it is in Gorky Park and Polar Star, this novel further develops the character of Renko and hints at new, more complex Renko novels to come. n Mary Whipple
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Steamy chiller?, 30 Aug 2006
By Cheeky Monkey (NW England) - See all my reviews
What's this, a Renko book with no snow? I approached this book with trepidation as Renko abroad just didn't seem right, but as they say you can take the boy out of Moscow, but...

Arkady Renko is back in his fourth outing and instead of solving murders in Moscow he's in Havana to tie up the loose ends relating to the officially acccidental death of his old friend, and erstwhile KGB major, Pribluda. Renko remains the sardonic enigma we have grown to know and love, but his trip to Cuba is more than just another murder story, here we see Renko struggling to come to terms with who he is and his place in the world. The world has changed, but has he? Can he cope with the modern post-Communist Russia or will he find a surrogate home in Marxist Cuba? Will he come to terms with losing his beloved Irina forever? Will he fall for the fierce but fragile Ofelia?

Martin Cruz Smith serves up another dish of sinister menace with lashings of blood and seedy locations, but I have to say this book seems to take an absolute age to get going. I only stuck with it as I has enjoyed the other Renko books so much and I was glad that I did. However, readers new to Renko might be put off with the slow start and give up before the real fireworks start. As such, I recommend that you read the Renko books in order and that way you'll know more about Renko's legacy, his thorny friendship with Pribluda and why he misses Irina so.

The sultry feel of this book will make you hot under the collar and make you reach for some cool rum, but don't be fooled as the freezing chills of Gorky Park can still be felt.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Travel Writing meets Detective Fiction
The decaying decadence and poverty of Cuba is brought to life with Arkady Renko suitably displaced, but also comfortably at home with a pseudo-Soviet system. Read more
Published 7 months ago by The Dunelmian

5.0 out of 5 stars Sometimes Suicide isn't Painless
Moscow detective Arkady Renko, out of work and miserable for the last half-dozen years, is called to the Russian Embassy in Havana to look into the mysterious disappearance of his... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Maria Magenta

4.0 out of 5 stars Gone Fishing...
Martin Cruz Smith is a former journalist and magazine editor. "Havana Bay" is his fourth novel - after "Gorky Park", "Polar Star" and "Red Square" - to feature Arkady Renko and... Read more
Published on 1 May 2007 by cluricaune

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Arkady Renko page turner!
Great read. Must have missed it when it came out, found it in a bookshelf in a Farmhouse B&B this winter! Read more
Published on 1 Mar 2007 by Max Reed

4.0 out of 5 stars Really good once it gets going
When I started to read this, at first I was thinking "oh no, not another Red Square"... but then the pace started to get better and better... Read more
Published on 6 Jul 2006 by Mr. Clark Gillies

4.0 out of 5 stars Cuba Calling
This is a very good book - well written, pacy and clever. The images it evokes of Havana and post-soviet Cuba run solid with ingenuity, pathos and humour. Read more
Published on 6 Jun 2006 by M. Thomas

5.0 out of 5 stars Once you are into the story, it will never let you go
Cruz Smith has the extraordinary ability to combine dry humor with suspence, mesmerizing you to last page and beyond. Read more
Published on 20 Nov 2001

5.0 out of 5 stars Really excellent
This book combines change in Cuba, including the jockeying for position that will accompany the death of Fidel, with the machinations of various mafias. Read more
Published on 15 April 2001 by 106323.1334@compuserve.com

5.0 out of 5 stars A DELIGHT
The character Arkady Renko should show aspiring writers the right way to do it. Modern novels generally fall down in their characterization, and the most important aspect of any... Read more
Published on 14 Feb 2001

5.0 out of 5 stars Got me hooked - couldnt put it down
From the moment I picked the book up I couldnt put it down. Extensive read and very well done too.
Published on 8 Feb 2001 by arkady.bernard@wdr.com

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