Cuba libre

Review by Booklist Review

Elmore Leonard's career began with westerns, and here he returns to the fringes of the genre with an ambitious, appealing story of a gunrunner at the time of the Spanish-American War. Savvy, self-reliant Ben Tyler wants what's owed him and is willing to bend the law to get it; that determination landed him in jail in Arizona for robbing banks to reclaim a debt, and now it's taken him to Cuba, where he and his partner hope to clear a bundle by selling guns to Cuban nationals. Then the USS Maine explodes, and all bets are off, as the Spanish and the Cubans jockey for position before the inevitable American invasion. There's a woman in the picture, too, Amelia Brown, the mistress of an American capitalist, and before you can say chemistry, Ben and Amelia have joined up with the rebels and hatched a plot to keep a chunk of the capitalist's cash. Fans will recognize immediately that Ben and Amelia are cut from the same cloth as many of Leonard's contemporary characters: gutsy individualists who think quick and act quicker. The historical material isn't quite as seamlessly woven into the narrative as one might hope, but the Cuba setting is wonderfully realized, and the Leonard staples--sharply drawn characters and superb dialogue--pull us through unscathed. Like James Lee Burke in Cimarron Rose [BKL Ja 1 & 15 97], Leonard melds western and crime genres masterfully, reminding us again that, under their trenchcoats, most hard-boiled heroes have the hearts of cowboys. --Bill Ott

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

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 characters‘even Tavalera has real style‘and readers will, too. This is the kind of book they will race through and then want to immediately re-read, slowly. Major ad/promo; BOMC and QPB selections; BDD audio; author tour. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

It's fascinating to compare the unabridged Cuba Libre in audio format, narrated here by George Guidall, with the abridged version (Audio Reviews, LJ 3/15/98). Although the complete version is 50 percent longer, both have all the action. What's lost in the abridged Spanish American War drama is background about Cuba. For example, local insurgents were fighting long before the Maine was sunk. In addition, the figure of $40,000 in ransom demanded from the plantation owner for his mistress was only arrived at after a lively discussion of the economics of Boudreaux's sugar operations. Appropriately, listeners of the unabridged edition get a story within a richer context and a decisively different delivery as well. Guidall narrates in a deliberate but incisive manner, which stimulates the listeners' imagination, while the edited, action-packed version has added bits of mood music and an excited soap opera-like performance.‘James Dudley, Copiague, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by School Library Journal Review

YA-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 (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Leonard goes back to his mots, and modern America's, in this rollicking Cuban western/suspenser, to be published on the 100th anniverary of the U.S.S. Maine's explosion. All Ben Tyler is looking for is to make a few fast dollars. Cowpunching in Arizona hasn't worked, or robbing banks either, so he agrees to join his friend Charlie Burke in exporting a string of horses to Cuba, though he just can't see how they stand to make any money on the deal. Unfortunately, Ben and Charlie have picked a historically bad moment for their tropical excursion: They make port just in time to remember the Maine indeed, and suddenly there are more complications than just paying prohibitive import duties, bribing officials and gobetweens, and holding their buyer--impassive, treacherous, polo-playing sugar baron Roland Boudreanx--to the price he's promised them. The US is determined to free Cuba from Spanish rule, but not so completely that the island will be independent--only enough so that American capitalists can step into the breach. In other words, the three-cornered conflict--which Ben & Co. waste no time adding more corners to--is nothing more than a classic Leonard seam writ large, the perfect background for the easygoing hero's lesser chicanery. Before Ben can begin to finger the goodies, though, a little disagreement between him and a Spanish hussar with easily inflamed honor lands him in prison along with a Marine casualty of the Maine who's been spirited out of the hospital, it seems, for the express purpose of rotting in jail. All would be lost if it weren't for Rollie Boudreaux's wide-awake courtesan Amelia Brown, who's got the world's best motive for breaking Ben out of stir. Carbines blazing, horses snorting, battles raging, the heroes drive the villains to a stalemate--and then prepare to battle each other. Top entertainment from the pro's pro (Out of Sight, 1996, etc.): a million greedy schemes with time-outs for war and sex. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Tyler arrived with the horses February eighteenth, three days after the battleship Maine blew up in Havana harbor. He saw buzzards floating in the sky the way they do but couldn't make out what they were after. This was off Morro Castle, the cattle boat streaming black smoke as it came through the narrows. But then pretty soon he saw a ship's mast and a tangle of metal sticking out of the water, gulls resting on it. One of the Mexican deckhands called to the pilot tug bringing them in, wanting to know what the wreckage was. The pilot yelled back it was the Maine. Yeah? The main what? Tyler's border Spanish failed to serve, trying to make out voices raised against the wind. The deckhand told him it was a buque de guerra, a warship. Earlier that month he had left Sweetmary in the Arizona Territory by rail: loaded thirty-one mares aboard Southern Pacific stock cars and rode them all the way to Galveston on the Gulf of Mexico. Here he was met by his partner in this deal, Charlie Burke, Tyler's foreman at one time, years ago. Charlie Burke introduced him to a little Cuban mulatto--"Ben Tyler, Victor Fuentes"--the man appearing to be a good sixty years old, though it was hard to tell, his skin the color of mahogany. Fuentes inspected the mares, none more than six years old or bigger than fifteen hands, checked each one's conformation and teeth, Fuentes wiping his hands on the pants of his white suit, picked twenty-five out of the bunch, all bays, browns and sorrels, and said he was sure they could sell the rest for the same money, one hundred fifty dollars each. He said Mr. Boudreaux was going to like these girls and would give them a check for thirty-seven hundred fifty dollars drawn on the Banco de Comercio before they left Havana. Fuentes said he would expect only five hundred of it for his services. Tyler said to Charlie Burke, later, the deal sounded different than the way he'd originally explained it. Charlie Burke said the way you did business in Cuba was the same as it worked in Mexico, everybody getting their cut. Tyler said, what he meant, he thought they were going directly from here to Matanzas, where Boudreaux's sugar estate was located. Charlie Burke said he thought so too; but Boudreaux happened to be in Havana this week and next. It meant they'd take the string off the boat, put the horses in stock pens for the man to look at, reload them and go on to Matanzas. What Tyler wanted to know, and Charlie Burke didn't have the answer: "Who pays for stopping in Havana?" That evening Charlie Burke and Mr. Fuentes left on a Ward Line steamer bound for Havana. It was late the next day Tyler watched his mares brought aboard the cattle boat, the name Vamoose barely readable on its rusted hull. Next came bales of hay and some oats, one of the stock handlers saying you didn't want a horse to eat much out at sea. Tyler stepped aboard with his saddle and gear to mind the animals himself. That was fine with the stock handlers; they had the cattle to tend. They said the trip would take five days. It was back toward the end of December Charlie Burke had wired: FOUND WAY TO GET RICH WITH HORSES. He came out on the train from East Texas and was waiting for Tyler the first day of the new year, 1898, on the porch of the Congress Hotel in Sweetmary, a town named for a copper mine, LaSalle Street empty going on 10:00 a.m., the mine shut down and the town sleeping off last night. Charlie Burke came out of the rocking chair to watch Tyler walking his dun mare this way past the Gold Dollar, past I.S. Weiss Mercantile, past the Maricopa Bank--Charlie Burke watching him looking hard at the bank as he came along. Tyler brought the dun up to the porch railing and said, "You know what horses are going for in Kansas City?" "Tell me," Charlie Burke said. "Twenty-five cents a head." They hadn't seen each other in almost four years. Charlie Burke said, "Then we don't want to go to Kansas City, do we?" He watched Tyler chew on that as he stepped down from the dun and came up on the porch. They took time now to hug each other, Charlie Burke's mind going back to the boy who'd come out here dying to work for a cattle outfit and ride horses for pay. Ben Tyler, sixteen years old and done with school, St. Simeon something or other for Boys, in New Orleans, this one quicker than the farm kids who wandered out from Missouri and Tennessee. Charlie Burke, foreman of the Circle-Eye at the time, as many as thirty riders under him spring through fall, put the boy to work chasing mustangs and company stock that had quit the bunch, and watched this kid gentle the green ones with a patience you didn't find in most hands. Watched him trail-boss herds they brought down in Old Mexico and drove to graze. Watched him quit the big spread after seven years to work for a mustanger named Dana Moon, supplying horses to mine companies and stage lines and remounts to the U.S. cavalry. Watched him take over the business after Moon was made Indian agent at White Tanks, a Mimbreno Apache subagency north of town. The next thing he saw of Ben Tyler was his face on a wanted poster above the notice: $500 REWARD DEAD OR ALIVE What happened, Tyler's business fell on hard times and he took to robbing banks. So then the next time Charlie Burke actually saw him was out in the far reaches of the territory at Yuma Prison: convicts and their visitors sitting across from one another at tables placed end to end down the center of the mess hall. Mothers, wives, sweethearts all wondering how their loved ones would fare in this stone prison known as the Hell Hole on the Bluff; Charlie Burke wondering why, if Tyler had made up his mind to rob banks, he chose the Maricopa branch in Sweetmary, where he was known. He said on account of it was the closest one. Charlie Burke said, "I come all the way out here to watch you stare past me at the wall?" So then Tyler said, all right, because it was where LaSalle Mining did their banking and LaSalle Mining owed him nine hundred dollars. "Four times I went up the hill to collect," Tyler said in his prison stripes and haircut, looking hard and half starved. "Try and find anybody in charge can cut a check. I went to the Maricopa Bank, showed the teller a .44 and withdrew the nine hundred from the mine company's account." "That's how you do business, huh?" "Hatch and Hodges owed me twelve hundred the day they shut down their line. They said don't worry, you'll get your money. I waited another four months, the same as I did with LaSalle, and drew it out of their bank over in Benson." "Who else owed you money?" "Nobody." "But you robbed another bank." "Yeah, well, once we had the hang of it...I'm kidding. It wasn't like Red and I got drunk and went out and robbed a bank. Red worked for Dana Moon before he came with me, had all that experience, so I offered him a share, but he'd only work for wages. After we did the two banks I paid Red what he had coming and he bought a suit of clothes cost him ten dollars, and wanted to put the rest in the bank. We're in St. David at the time. We go to the bank to open a savings account and the bank refused him. I asked the manager, was it on account of Red being Warm Springs Apache? The manager become snotty and one thing led to another...." "You robbed the bank to teach him manners." "Red was about to shoot him." "Speaking of shooting people," Charlie Burke said, prompting his friend the convict. "We were on the dodge by then," Tyler said, "wanted posters out on us. To some people that five hundred reward looked like a year's wages. These fellas I know were horse thieves--they ran my stock more than once--they got after us for the reward, followed our tracks all the way to Nogales and threw down on us in a cantina--smoky place, had a real low ceiling." "The story going around," Charlie Burke said, "they pulled, Ben Tyler pulled and shot all three of them dead." "Maybe, though I doubt it. All the guns going off in there and the smoke, it was hard to tell. We came back across the border, the deputies were waiting there to run us down." "Have you learned anything?" "Always have fresh horses with you." "You've become a smart aleck, huh?" "Not around here. They put you in leg irons." "What do you need I can get you?" "Some books, magazines. Dana Moon sends me the Chicago Times he gets from some fella he knows." "You don't seem to be doing too bad." "Considering I live in a cell with five hot-headed morons and bust rocks into gravel all day. I've started teaching Mr. Rinning's children how to ride the horsey and they like me. Mr. Rinning's the superintendent; he says to me, 'You're no outlaw, you're just stupid--a big educated fella like you robbing banks?' He says if I'm done being stupid I'll be out as soon as I do three years." Charlie Burke said to him that day in the Yuma mess hall, "Are you done?" "I was mad is all, those people owing me money I'd worked hard for. Yeah, I got it out of my system," Tyler said. "But you know what? There ain't nothing to robbing a bank." He was back at the Circle-Eye riding the winter range, looking for late calves or ones that had dodged the roundup. Giving each other that hug, Charlie Burke felt the shape of a revolver beneath Tyler's sheepskin hanging open. Stepping back, he pulled the coat open a little more, enough to see the .44 revolver hanging in a shoulder rig. "You have somebody mad at you?" Charlie Burke speaking, as usual, through his big mustache and a wad of Mail Pouch. "You don't ever want to win fame as an outlaw," Tyler said, "unless everybody knows you've done your time. There're people who save wanted dodgers and keep an eye out. They see me riding up the street and think, Why, there's five hundred dollars going by. Next thing I know, I'm trying to explain the situation to these men holding Winchesters on me. I've been shot at twice out on the graze, long range. Another time I'm in a line shack, a fella rode right into my camp and pulled on me." "You shot him?" "I had to. Now I got his relatives looking for me. It's the kind of thing never ends." "Well," Charlie Burke said, "you should never've robbed those banks." Tyler said, "Thanks for telling me." Excerpted from Cuba Libre by Elmore Leonard All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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