Mystery Scene Review

Havana Black by Leonardo Padura (W)
Bitter Lemon Press, June, 2006

When the bludgeoned and emasculated body of Miguel Forcade is washed up on a Havana beach Cuban police lieutenant Mario Conde, Havana's best detective, is called on to investigate. Although he has just resigned from the police, Lieutenant Conde is “persuaded” to take the case.

The victim was a former director of the Office of Expropriated Properties in the early Castro regime and had defected 10 years earlier. To solve the crime, Conde must work through a complex maze of politics, missing art treasures and sex. His new boss has given him only three days to close the case, a time period which coincidentally matches the expected arrival of a violent hurricane and his 36th birthday.

Leonardo Padura is Cuba's most popular writer of crime fiction. This novel is one of a series that comprises “The Havana Quartet,” although it reads as a stand-alone. While the writing is of a florid style that may or may not be due to the English translation by Peter Bush, the story is not only enjoyable as crime noir fiction, but it also provides an inside look at a city and a country about which most outsiders are unfamiliar.

- Joseph Scarpato Jr.

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