Havana Run - Softcover

Standiford, Les

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0425197174 ISBN 13: 9780425197172

Publisher: Berkley, 2004

Synopsis

Hoping to rebuild the family construction business, John Deal takes a job in Cuba only to find that he has been set up as an unwitting pawn in a plot to rescue an American prisoner from a Castro jail. Reprint.

About this title

About the Author:

Les Standiford is the author of ten novels and of the recent nonfiction Last Train to Paradise. He is the director of the creative writing program at Florida International University in Miami.

From Booklist:

Standiford's John Deal series, starring the South Florida building contractor, derives much of its tension from a common genre theme: the call from the grave. Typically, the "call" prompts an investigation into a long-buried secret. With Deal, however, the phone just keeps ringing, and the caller is always his dad, the legendary builder Barton Deal, whose suicide exposed a lifetime of shady dealings with the Mob. John has been living with his father's tarnished reputation for years, struggling to rebuild the business Dad left in shambles. This time the call comes from Cuba, but the message is hidden, at least at first. Approached by a supposedly reputable businessman planning for the post-Castro era, Deal is tempted by prospects of an enormous contract to restore Havana's faded but still grand buildings. Agreeing to an "ex-officio" trip to Cuba to explore the possibilities, Deal learns quickly that he's been lured to the island for another reason, one that may involve his father. Standiford does a superb job of setting up his complex plot, using the color-drenched, ever-threatening Havana landscape both to ratchet up the tension and to emphasize the otherworldly nature of this latest and most baffling call from the grave. (See the Read-alikes column, opposite, for other examples of Cuban noir.) Among his fellow Floridian crime writers, Standiford is most similar to Randy Wayne White in his ability to combine straight-ahead adventure with subtle character development. The realistic wing of the Florida crime novel gets less attention than the comic (Leonard) and surreal (Hiaasen) branches, but it is every bit as deserving of our attention. Bill Ott
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About this edition

• Publisher: Berkley
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0425197174
• ISBN 13: 9780425197172
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 288