The Barnes & Noble Review
Set on the eve of the Spanish-American War, this electrifying novel takes off like a shot. A spellbinding journey into the heart and soul of the Cuban revolution of a hundred years ago, Cuba Libre is an explosive mix of high adventure, history brought to life, and a honey of a love story all with the dead-on dialogue and unforgettable characters that mark Elmore Leonard as an American original.
Just three days after the sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana harbor, Ben Tyler arrives with a string of horses to sell cover for a boatload of guns he's running to Cuban insurgents, risking a firing squad if he's caught. The cowboy's first day ashore sets the pace for a wild ride to come. He sells the horses to an American planter, Roland Boudreaux, who's making a killing in Cuba, falls in love with the man's sparkly New Orleans-born mistress, Amelia, makes an enemy of a terrorizing Guardia Civil officer named Tavalera, and makes a friend of a mysterious old Cuban. When Tyler is forced into a gunfight and thrown in prison, Tavalera is determined to nail him as a spy. America is about to declare war on Spain, and if Tyler doesn't manage to get out very soon, he's a dead man.
How his escape comes about, with surprising help, is the high point from which the plot takes off on a train ride across Cuba, with Tyler and Amelia looking for more than love a lot more: the chance to snatch a bundle of Boudreaux's cash, if they can pull it off. But who can you trust?
Everyone's a schemer in this one.
Breaking new ground for Leonard, thisrip-roaringjaunt into history is packed with all the twists, turns, sly plot, and wicked wit his fans have come to expect of a writer who has redefined the art of the novel.
Edward Neuert
Elmore Leonard's Cuba Libre has come along just as Jackie BrownQuentin Tarantino's film version of his earlier novel, Rum Punchis fading at your local multiplex. In this age of continuous marketing, you expect a well-planned connection between the two events, perhaps an extension of Jackie's story from the writer whose luckless characters seem to be the only people in America who consider mixology a hard science. The fact that this assumption is wrong is both good and bad news for Leonard fans.
Surely the good news is that Leonard is covering new ground, reaching back 100 years to the exceedingly brief Spanish-American War. Perhaps "new" is a misleading word here. Back before he tracked the down-and-out who shuttle along the trail between Miami and Detroit, Leonard started out as a writer of westerns. And you might easily see the Spanish-American War as a sort of range war, a western with palm fronds. Leonard certainly seems to. He's stocked his story with people who'd be just as comfortable in Yuma as old Havana.
Ben Tyler, mustang wrangler, has seen more of Yuma, in fact, than he'd ever cared to, having just finished doing several years in the state prison there for collecting money owed to him by wealthy mine owners in an innovative mannerby "withdrawing" it from their local bank accounts at the point of a gun. Tyler is lured into a horse trading/gun running expedition by a smooth-talking friend who needs that hardest-to-find employee, the kind with basic integrity but an outlaw past"If I'm gonna break the law I ought to have a partner know's what it's like...somebody that's et the cake."
That Ben's et a little more than he expected becomes apparent even as his gun-laden cattle boat sails into Havana's harbor, past the "pile of scrap" that just three days before was the U.S. battleship Maine. Waiting for him in Havana are a collection of nasty Spanish soldiers and local constables, shadowy revolutionaries and an unscrupulousof courseAmerican plantation owner with a feisty mistress, Amelia Brown, who takes an immediate liking to the displaced cowboy. As war breaks out, Ben and Amelia face the complicated task of liberating themselves and making off with a standard Leonard propa small parcel of thickly wadded bank notes.
No one would hold it against Leonard for wanting to stretch his talent from time to time; but Cuba Libre only feels like it's coming alive at those moments when it most resembles Leonard's modern-day fiction. When he's laying on the historyalmost always through the mouths of American newspaper correspondentsLeonard's usually brisk pacing flounders and feels as dead in the water as the Maine. It takes a novel like this to drive home the realization of how much truth Leonard can revealand how much fun he can havewhen he's anchored in the wonderful, desperate present.
Salon
New York Times Book Review
The greatest crime writer of our time, perhaps ever!
Detroit News
An absolute master.
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
A departure from Leonard's usual Miami-Detroit axis, a return to his western-writing roots and possibly his most ambitious book yet, this is a dazzling play on and explication of the 1898 Spanish-American War. Arizona horse dealer (and ex-con bank robber) Ben Tyler joins his old boss, Charlie Burke, in a plan to sell horses (and, secretly, guns) in Cuba. When Tyler, in self-defense, kills a hotheaded Spanish officer, he and Charlie are flung into a hellish prison at the mercy of Guardia Civil Major Tavalera, easily one of Leonard's nastiest villains. Then the USS Maine blows up in Havana's harbor and the U.S. and Spain spin toward war, with Cuban insurrectos goading on the inevitable violence. Tyler becomes involved with an assortment of colorful characters: old mulatto Cuban patriot Victor Fuentes; American sugar planter Roland Boundreaux and his young mistress, Amelia Brown; Virgil Webster, a boyish Marine survivor of the Maine; Chicago newsman Neely Tucker (who occasionally serves as the book's chorus); Havana police detective Rudi Calvo; and rebel guerrilla chief Islero, who's Victor's half-brother. The plot gallops along from Havana to Natanzas to the jungle to Guantanamo Bay. Motivations are of course very tangled. In brilliantly laconic prose and expert flashbacks, Leonard depicts Spain's harsh suppression of Cubans (especially blacks), the Maine explosion, ambushes, chases, two shootings in Havana's Hotel Ingeletterra bar and the attack on Guantanamo Bay. Ben and Amelia's affair is sweet, funny and believable; and, if Ben's final affection for Cuba seems a bit strained, it also manages to generate another drop-dead Leonard last line. Leonard flashes less of his throwaway humor here than usual, but he clearly has great sympathy for almost all his characterseven Tavalera has real styleand readers will, too. This is the kind of book they will race through and then want to immediately re-read, slowly.
Library Journal
The prolific Leonard (Out of Sight) has written genre Westerns and a long string of successful crime thrillers that transcended genre writing; now, he pulls off a wonderful historical novel, due to be published at the centenary of the onset of the Spanish-American War. Ben Tyler, a cowboy cum bank robber, is recruited by an old partner to assist in a scheme to run guns to insurgent Cubans, under cover of horse trading. When they arrive, they find the U.S.S. Maine's wreckage in the harbor at Havana, and Tyler his partner must cope with a rapidly developing chain of events. Leonard characteristically dispenses with long descriptive passages, but his 1898 Cuba is richly evoked via dialog and action, and the irony of the coming war between the two great powers for custody of this small island is lost neither upon the author nor his characters. Happy to have read such a fine story, one comes away curious to know more about the period and its events.
David Dodd, Santa Cruz Cty. Lib. Sys., California
School Library Journal
This book has something to interest almost everyone. Set against the rich and compelling backdrop of Cuba during its struggle for independence, the story includes bank robbery, cattle rustling, love, suspense, and action-packed adventure. Realistic, memorable characters come to life in the scheming twists and turns of a complex plot. Leonard writes in an easy-to-follow style; his bad guys are truly BAD, and readers find themselves rooting for the hero and heroine as they hide, the Spanish Civil guards in hot pursuit. The plot is larded with history, beginning with the sinking of the USS Maine in the harbor of Havana, and ending with Roosevelt and his Rough Riders's charge up San Juan Hill. A rare glimpse of the Spanish-American War and the fight for Cuban independence.
Anita Short, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, Va.
Charles Waring
[N]ot so much a stylistic departure as a return to old pastures for Elmore Leonard....[T]his new novel sees him coming full-circle, but now bringing with him an experience and consummate assurance that was lacking in his earliest work....Like a vintage wine, Elmore Leonard just seems to get better with time.
Crime-Time
From the Publisher
The greatest crime writer of our time, perhaps ever!” — The New York Times Book Review
“An absolute master.” — The Detroit News
The New York Times Book Review
The greatest crime writer of our time, perhaps ever!
The Detroit News
An absolute master.
FEB/MAR 00 - AudioFile
Elmore Leonard, highly acclaimed for his crime fiction, returns to the genre in which he began: Westerns. Leonard’s bank-robbing cowboy, Ben Tyler, leaves jail to become a gunrunner to insurgent Cubans, who have blown up the U.S.S. MAINE in Havana’s harbor. George Guidall narrates masterfully from American, Spanish and Cuban-accented perspectives amidst gunfights galore. Guidall’s pacing reflects the difference in personalities, keeping us involved with the individuals, rather than engulfed by the action. He gracefully relays the history and politics of 1898 Cuba. Guidall is Leonard’s perfect match to mix genres so appealingly. R.N. © AudioFile, Portland, Maine