Cuba Libre by Elmore Leonard |
I picked this up at Powell's City of Books a couple of weeks ago. I was looking for something I could read. I browsed the Science Fiction section for a while, but nothing grabbed me, so I figured I'd pick up a couple of Murder Mysteries from authors I knew. Elmore Leonard usually writes pretty good, hard-boiled murder mysteries. A bunch of shows were based on his books. These four I remember clearly:
- 3:10 to Yuma (2007)
- Jackie Brown (1997)
- Get Shorty (1995)
- TV series Justified (2010—2015)
Morro Castle Havana |
Cuba Libre isn't one of them. It's more of a historical adventure story. It opens in 1898 right after the USS Maine got blown up, which triggers the Spanish-American War. It's pretty great. We have heroes, villains, a pretty girl, guns and a sprinkling of factoids that make it seem very real.
Characters:
- Ben Tyler - our hero
- Charlie Burke - Ben's partner
- Roland 'Rollie' Boudreaux - sugar plantation owner, polo player
- Amelia Brown - our girl and Rollie's mistress
- Victor Fuentes - Rollie's factotum
- Novis Crowe - Rollie's bodyguard
- Palenzuela - Havana Chief of Police
- Rudy Calvo - investigator for Palenzuela
- Lorraine - Amelia's friend and the Chief's mistress
- Neely Tucker - reporter page 12
- Paulina Gonzales
- Gomez
- Osma - former slave and slave hunter
- Dr. Henriques - San Lazaro hospital for lepers page 330
- Mary Lou Jones - San Lazaro hospital for lepers page 330
- Tavalera - evil Guardia leader
- Isabela Catolica page 236
- Islero - insurgent general
A number of historical figures are mentioned:
- John J. Crittenden - American patriot
- Clara Barton - founded American Red Cross page 89
- Winston Churchill - junior British military officer page 85
- Evangelina Cisneros - Cuban imprisoned by Spanish authorities page 89
- Charles Crocker - railroad tycoon page 12 (Crooker)
- Richard Harding Davis - reporter page 12
- Frederick Funston - American artillerist page 297
- Calixto García - Cuban General page 85
- Máximo Gómez - Cuban General page 85
- William Randolph Hearst - Newspaper mogul page 87
- Julia Ward Howe - author and social activist page 89
- Fitzhugh Lee - American Army General page 87
- Narcisco Lopez - Cuban patriot
- Charles Dwight Sigsbee - Captain of the USS Maine page 85
- Valeriano Weyler - Spanish General page 87
Here's some pics of stuff that got mentioned:
USS Terror, page 190 |
Spanish cruiser Vizcaya |
The Sims-Dudley Dynamite Gun Uses compressed air to fire explosive rounds |
Chapter 17, page 260, the cowboy and the marine set off to collect a debt from the owner of a sugar cane plantation. Naturally there are guns involved:
Minute of Mae: Spanish Mauser 1893
C&Rsenal
Minute of Mae: U.S. Krag–Jørgensen 1898
C&Rsenal
Minute of Mae: S&W No.3 Russian 3rd Model
C&Rsenal
Page 301. In 1898, trains and horses were the primary means of transportation. Sometimes you carried your horses on a train, which meant you had to raise the horse four feet off of the ground to get into the stock car. For that you need a ramp:
Soviet Union, South.- Horses being loaded into a train." August 1942 |
Havana Cuba 1898 |
Cuba |
I was able to find most of the places mentioned in the book. I marked them on a Google Map. The Cluster of blue markers are around Havana, the green ones are around Matanzas and yellow ones have to do with the war.
I wrote a couple of pages of notes about Cuba Straits, a murder mystery set in Cuba. Page 1 here. Page 2 here. And then there's all my other posts about Cuba.
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