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:

• 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.