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Friday, April 26, 2024

Cuba Libre by Elmore Leonard

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:
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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