Living in South Florida, I am well aware of what goes on in Cuba and its impact on the US, especially in the area in which I live.

So Nelson DeMille’s latest novel, The Cuban Affair (Simon & Schuster), held special interest for me, aside from the gripping plot. The look at Cuba, and also the Keys, was what I was after.

Of course, the extra bonus is that The Cuban Affair is a darn good mystery. As I wrote in my Sun Sentinel review, The Cuban Affair is “a heady mix of politics—both US and Cuban—culture, nonstop action, and believable characters.”

DeMille launches a new series with his 20th novel, The Cuban Affair, and his new hero—Daniel “Mac” MacCormick—proves more than capable of leading his own series.

A 35-year-old army veteran wounded in Afghanistan and now living in Key West, Florida, as a charter boat captain, Mac is coaxed into a covert trip to Cuba that offers him a huge paycheck.

A group of anti-Castro Cuban-Americans hire Mac to bring back millions of dollars and some documents hidden in a Cuban cave.

“To say the job is risky is an understatement and it involves a convoluted network of plans, any of which could go wrong,” I wrote in my review.

The Cuban Affair is set in 2015, and US relations with Cuba were very different then, especially in light of recent developments in Washington. DeMille deftly makes “The Cuban Thaw,” as more than one character describes it, an integral part of the plot, which shows suspicions on both sides.

Mac sees Cuba as “an alternative universe where the past and the present fought to become the future.”

The Cuban Affair works as a travel guide, showing the country, the cities, and the people with clarity.

DeMille’s precise research stems from a trip he took with the Yale Educational Travel group in 2015. On that trip was a childhood friend who had been a roommate of former Secretary of State John Kerry.

They had a meeting with the newly opened American embassy in Havana, and a briefing there provided a lot of “grist” for his research, as he writes in a note to his readers. (That embassy has been in the news a lot lately.) While in Havana, DeMille’s group also visited many sites.

This research is deftly woven into the brisk, action-packed plot of The Cuban Affair.

But in addition to Cuban politics, DeMille also delves into the emotional landscape of those who have strong roots in the country. One character sees her grandparents’ former house, the bank her grandfather managed, and the streets her parents once walked. I know many Cuban-Americans who have had similar experiences.

It’s not giving anything away to say that The Cuban Affair begins and ends at The Green Parrot bar in Key West.

The Keys were devastated by Hurricane Irma, but Key West is open again for business, as is The Green Parrot, a landmark bar.

Nelson DeMille photo by John Ellis Kordes Photography.

Hi Everyone,

Very few writers become true household names but James Patterson has certainly met that bar and then some. As prodigious as his writing output is, his philanthropical activities are just as impressive. Over the past few years, Patterson has given millions of dollars to libraries, classrooms, and independent bookstores across the country. We were delighted that he could take time from his busy schedule to chat with Oline Cogdill in this issue.

One hundred years ago, Mary Roberts Rinehart was almost as famous as Patterson. For some years she was the highest-earning author in the country. Rinehart was also a character, and as our writer Michael Mallory notes: “She made fortunes, lost fortunes, made new fortunes, and lived large with a sense of adventure.”

Brian and I traveled to Toronto for this year’s Bouchercon, and it was wonderful to see friends, new and old, including a number of subscribers. Brian and I ran into Peggy Perdue, curator of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at the Toronto Reference Library. Peggy gave Brian a tour of this fascinating collection, which you can read about in this issue.

John Valeri has two interesting interviews in this issue, one with the Maine cozy author Barbara Ross, and the other with Long Island writer Chris Knopf, who has also recently taken on a role at the well-respected Permanent Press.

Oline Cogdill talks to Joe Ide, whose first Isaiah Quintabe novel, IQ, hit several best-of- the-year lists last year and just won both Bouchercon’s Anthony Award and the Private Eye Writers of America’s Shamus Award for best first novel. His new novel, Righteous, is out and I can attest it’s just as much fun as its predecessor. Don’t miss this “hip-hop Sherlock,” he’s a hoot!

Kevin Burton Smith has been searching high and low for exactly the right holiday gifts for the mystery lovers in your life. This year’s bumper crop is sure to help you cope with the season’s shopping—or fill your own stocking with loot.

Brèni James is an almost-forgotten midcentury police procedural writer. Jon L. Breen thinks that’s a shame and makes a solid argument for reappraising her work in this issue. It persuaded me to buy both of her books, which are now at the top of my “to be read” stack.

Enjoy!

Kate Stine
Editor-in-chief

In tribute to the total eclipse of 2017, I’ve decided to start off this column with Day of the Dark: Stories of Eclipse, edited by Kaye George. While the stories are uneven—some terrific, some blah—each provides a plotline based on those amazing two hours so many of us experienced. The most dire take on the eclipse arrives in Carol L. Wright’s “Dark Side of the Light,” in which a NASA scientist knows something about the upcoming event that his not-very-bright wife doesn’t know. But one of my favorite stories in the collection is Leslie Wheeler’s “Chasing the Moon,” which focuses on several groups of people in different states as the eclipse sweeps across the US, from Madras, Oregon, to Columbia, South Carolina. For some, it’s a wonderful event; for others, not so much. Paul D. Marks’ “Blood Moon” offers a bleak, noirish tale, while Melissa H. Blaine’s “The Devil’s Standtable” goes in the opposite direction by presenting readers with a group of loonies who see—or imagine—all sorts of otherworldly goings-on during the totality. An important thing to remember while reading these stories is that they were all written before the eclipse, when all sorts of odd human behaviors were being forecast, as in the story where the end of the world is proclaimed as nigh. Fortunately, in real life we dodged that particular bullet. After all, we’re still here, still complaining about the weather. Editor Kaye George is to be congratulated for putting together such an interesting and varied collection about a once-in-a-lifetime event.

During the dark, dismal days of winter (for many of us), what could be more inviting than a cozy mystery set in balmy Los Angeles? Well, how about a cozy set in Los Angeles—with wine! Just in time, Christine E. Blum serves up Full Bodied Murder, first in a new series featuring Annie “Halsey” Hall and the Rose Avenue Wine Club. Like many other novice sleuths in the cozy tradition, Halsey is a refugee from a failed romance, a high-stress job (designing computer apps), and the big city, in this case New York. Unlike so many of her fictional peers, though, Halsey exchanges her complicated big-city life for an equally complicated big-city life in LA. Halsey isn’t one for downsizing and simplifying; rather, she purchases a house with a pool and, accompanied by her Labrador puppy, sets up as a freelance web designer. No business owner retail nirvana for her! In fact, she can barely generate work product because she immediately befriends a group of local ladies who constitute the Rose Avenue Wine Club. And, boy, these folks are serious oenophiles! I lost count of the bottles of wine that the club members consume on a seemingly daily basis. Most mysterious of all, they never seem to suffer from hangovers. While Halsey contrives to escape morning-after headaches, she does incur an inordinate number of head injuries. That’s because she swiftly discovers the corpse of a neighbor who has been murdered with a knife. With her newfound group of wine lovers, she determines to identify the murderer. Certainly, there is no shortage of suspects in the neighborhood, where drug dealers and a suspicious couple engage in nefarious activities. Fortunately, Halsey hooks up with hunky dog trainer Jack, who also assists in the investigation. Finally, after sustaining the aforementioned concussions, she does identify the killer. Full Bodied Murder is a success story. Introducing a hilarious heroine who creates a vibrant new life for herself, replete with new romance, new job, and new neighborhood populated by quirky, enjoyable friends who know how to imbibe wine. Cheers to Christine E. Blum, who presents a witty new cozy series—and a fully-stocked glossary of wine, which is even better than the recipes that populate other mysteries. Decant this one, ASAP!

The House at Baker Street features, as you might expect from the title, the legendary consulting detectives Messrs. Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, MD. But in House, they only appear as supporting characters, on the periphery of the main action, as the focus of Michelle Birkby’s arresting debut are the women in their lives: their landlady, the surprisingly formidable Mrs. Hudson, and Watson’s beloved, ultra-competent spouse, Mary. Here, the duo come to the aid of a desperate client that Holmes has impatiently turned away, one Mrs. Laura Shirley, who is being blackmailed by a truly loathsome creature who enjoys destroying lives.

Birkby walks a fine line here, careful to develop the two women who remain largely in the background of the Holmes canon, while at the same time dropping myriad grace notes into the mix. Thus, readers learn more about Mrs. Higgins’ background, and her close relationship with Mary, but also get to enjoy cameos from the Baker Street Irregulars, Mycroft Holmes, and, as you might have guessed, Irene Adler. Birkby navigates the tricky terrain expertly, setting up a series that promises a great deal of charm, and, more importantly, staying power.

In 1963, John le Carré leaped into literary stardom with his alternative to Ian Fleming’s popular fantasy adventures of superspy James Bond. Under his birth name, David Cornwell, he worked in Intelligence during the 1950s and a portion of the ’60s, giving him an even more jaundiced view of the clandestine profession than Graham Greene’s. His grim and gritty, ultra-realistic The Spy Who Came in From the Cold may have focused on hapless British agent Alec Leamas and his desperate attempt to complete an impossible assignment, but it also featured spymaster George Smiley, a character who’d previously solved crimes in the author’s first novels, both mystery fiction, Call for the Dead (1961) and A Murder of Quality (1962). After The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, Smiley, the top investigator in England’s intelligence service, held sway over several superb novels, including Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974) and The Honorable Schoolboy (1977). Though The Secret Pilgrim (1990) includes stories from the master’s past, the character was retired by the author after Smiley’s People (1979). Until now. Still, Smiley isn’t the protagonist of A Legacy of Spies. That would be his right hand man, Peter Guillam, once described as “Young Peter,” but these days feeling his age and a strange mixture of annoyance and fear at being plucked from retirement by a new generation of intelligence operatives who pressure him for the whereabouts of his mentor. They want to “interrogate” Smiley about the more controversial activities of The Circus (le Carré’s name for the agency) during the Cold War years. They’re particularly interested in those involving the fate of Leamas and a woman he recruited, whose offspring are suing the British government. This is a very clever way for the author to bring us up to date on his famous Smiley, who eventually puts in a notable appearance, to answer some of the questions left at the end of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (and The Honorable Schoolboy), and to close the file on The Circus’ Cold War years. Le Carré was the reader of most if not all of his previous audio novels, but this time he has left that task to actor Hollander, who appeared in the recent miniseries made from the author’s The Night Manager. Either purposely or by chance, he sounds very much like le Carré, properly British, with a smooth, perfectly paced, compelling delivery. He does a splendid job of vocally interpreting the many moods of the book’s narrator, Guillam, who’s insulted, threatened, stalked, and battered. He’s also particularly adept at catching the smarmy, insinuating tones of Guillam’s interrogators, the loathsome, insinuating Bunny and the feral Laura. Unlike le Carré, Hollander does not imitate Alec Guinness in giving voice to Smiley. He could, of course, be imitating the more recent Smiley, Gary Oldman, but who would know?

An explosive device planted at New York’s 1939 World’s Fair launched the career of the Mad Bomber, who would periodically rattle the city through the mid-1950s—with an announced hiatus for the duration of World War II in demonstration of his patriotism! Cannell’s distinguished work of true-crime writing recounts not only the bombings, their investigation, solution, and aftermath, but also the history of anarchist terrorism in the 20th century, American police work, and the ascendency and decline of newspaper journalism. It also serves as a dual biography of the bomber, not an anarchist but a disabled former Consolidated Edison employee who had a valid though inappropriately expressed grievance against the company, and the Freudian psychiatrist who through analyzing clues in the bomber’s letters to the press drew a portrait that proved to be remarkably accurate.

As science fiction sometimes anticipates the future, in this case so did detective fiction. As Cannell points out, Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin and Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes practiced the same sort of deductive reasoning Dr. James A. Brussel applied to the bomber and later to the Boston Strangler. “In 1956, there was no such thing as criminal profiling; nobody could recall an instance when the police had consulted a psychiatrist. It was a collaboration fabricated in detective novels, but never found in real life.” Brussel admitted in later writings that while he always started “with a solid basis of science...somewhere along the way intuition and imagination begin to take over.” The chapter in which Brussel reveals his profile of the bomber is extremely Sherlockian in feel. And Cannell notes, “Like Sherlock Holmes, he played the odds.”

I initially reviewed Incendiary from the audiobook, which, though effectively read by Peter Berkrot, demonstrates the limitations of the audio format for works of historical nonfiction. The print edition has eight pages of illustrations (most memorably a couple shots of the amiable, respectable-looking, and unthreatening bomber at the time of his arrest), and 19 pages of source notes.

One of my favorite moments in the 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express comes near the end—and I am not giving away any spoilers here—when the array of passengers are by themselves in the train car.

The investigation is over and as the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney) looks back, everyone begins to click champagne glasses.

The way each passenger clicks his or her glass with another is indicative of their character—a strong click, a confident click, a meek click, a shy one. It all comes together as Poirot, ever the outsider but also ever the observer, looks on, pleased yet also a bit shaken at how things turned out.

Murder on the Orient Express—the 1974 version, the 2001 remake with Alfred Molina as Poirot, the 2006 version with David Suchet as Poirot and now the 2017 one with Kenneth Branagh—are based on the 1934 novel by Agatha Christie.

Murder on the Orient Express is one of Christie’s best-known novels—mainly, I think, because it is constantly remade.

If you don’t know the plot by now, don’t expect me to give it away.

Let’s just say, Murder on the Orient Express is about:

A murder

That happens on the Orient Express train

During winter

then the train gets stuck.

The cast is big.

It has Hercule Poirot.

And that leads me to this latest incarnation of Murder on the Orient Express.

All of the above happens in the 2017 version of this Christie classic, in which Kenneth Branagh directs and stars.

And just like the 1974 version directed by Sidney Lumet, Branagh uses an all-star cast.

But how films are made and also viewed by audiences have changed drastically in 43 years. The clever casting in 1974 gave us a tight ensemble that included Lauren Bacall, Michael York, Wendy Hiller, Anthony Perkins, Vanessa Redgrave, Sean Connery, John Gielgud, Ingrid Bergman, Jacqueline Bisset, and Rachel Roberts, among others.

But the 2017 cast seems more like a gimmick—how many popular actors can we cram into one movie. These established and up-and-coming actors include Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Judi Dench, Willem Dafoe, Penélope Cruz, Derek Jacobi, Olivia Colman, Josh Gad, Daisy Ridley, and Leslie Odom Jr., among others.

The plot, of course, hasn’t changed. A murder of a mysterious passenger occurs in the middle of the night, shortly before the train stalls—this time on a cliff-side rail. The view is breathtaking—CGI special effects weren’t high on the list in 1974. Because there is nowhere to go, the murderer must be one of the passengers on the lushly appointed train.

CGI also allows Branagh to open up the movie by staging an elaborate foot race. While this gives Murder on the Orient Express some extra action, it also takes away from the story. One reason the other versions worked so well is that by keeping the story on the train the sense of claustrophobia was heightened and the menace that the killer “may be among us” added to the tension.

As Poirot, Branagh never quite rises to the level of the other actors who have portrayed him. Branagh adds a bit of compassion to the character while also showing his fussy quirks, which are both irritating and charming. But his leaps to conclusion about the case seem rather far-fetched here.

I also worried that at any moment Branagh’s mammoth mustache would attack him. In the books and other films, Poirot’s mustache is his pride and joy—a tidy, crisp line that he lovingly waxes and even sleeps with a special mask to protect. But that mustache has never been this huge, and the sleeping mask he wears to protect it looks like a forerunner of those CPAP machines people use for sleeping. The ‘stache is  kind of like David Caruso’s sunglasses in CSI: Miami. All you can see when Caruso’s Horatio Caine takes those sunglasses on or off are those darned shades.

And as good an actor as Branagh is—his Hamlet and the film Dead Again showcase this—he is outshined by some of his cast, especially Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Judi Dench, Olivia Colman, Daisy Ridley, and Leslie Odom Jr.

This new incarnation of Murder on the Orient Express is entertaining, but never really soars, nor touches with quite the emotion we need. Christie was a master at looking at class systems and what motivated people. This comes through in Branagh’s film, especially in the relationship between Daisy Ridley and Leslie Odom Jr., which gives us another view of the couple who were portrayed by Connery and Redgrave in 1974.

But Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express devolves when he gives us unnecessary action scenes. We don’t need this cerebral man who relies on his “little grey cells” to be running around in the snow, chasing someone. Nor does he need to have a gun pulled on him—twice—or get into a physical fight. And a scene toward the end is pure hysteria and so jarring. These scenes seem to take too many liberties with the Christie text and work against the film. It is one thing to show a different side of the story with an interracial couple that enhances the story. It’s another thing to cheapen the story with silly asides.

And, do we need a new Murder on the Orient Express? The other versions were much more satisfying. There are tons of terrific modern mysteries that would make involving films or TV series. I want new ideas, new stories, not remake after remake. And there are plenty of works by Christie or other crime-fiction masters that would make terrific films. And one spoiler, the end seems to suggest that Death on the Nile will be Branagh’s next project. I hope he sees the 1978 version with Peter Ustinov as Poirot and Bette Davis, Angela Lansbury, Maggie Smith, and Lois Chiles.

As for that last scene with the champagne toasts, well, you’ll have to wait a long time.

This scene now seems to be a Last Supper-like approach. I just kept thinking how cold everyone must be.

Murder on the Orient Express: Rated PG-13 for murder. Running time: 1 hour, 54 minutes.

PHOTOS: Top, Kenneth Branagh, center, Daisy Ridley, Michelle Pfeiffer, Leslie Odom Jr. Photos courtesy 20th Century Fox.