Havana Bay (Arkady Renko Novels, No 4)
by Martin Cruz Smith
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Book Reviews of Havana Bay (Arkady Renko Novels, No 4)
Book Review: Probably the book with the most humor in this excellent but sad series
Summary: 4 Stars
Renko, alone and in his forties, goes to Cuba to identify the body of a murder victim that the Cubans claim is his old friend/enemy Pribluda, formerly of the KGB.
During his week in Cuba, Renko gets involved in a complicated plot involving Santeria, a mysterious yacht club, a beautiful Cuban woman detective, and plots to assassinate Fidel Castro.
Here, the Cubans never name Fidel outright as if he's the devil or something: in order bring up Fidel without saying his name, they make an ominous motion of stroking an invisible beard.
Cuba and the Cubans come across with vivid flair and eccentricity. The Cuban woman detective gets a third-person viewpoint along with Arkady so you get a view of him and learn a lot that he wouldn't know such as the meanings of Santeria symbolism. This adds a rich dimension.
The plot itself, involving false trading companies from Panama, got a little boring for me. I far preferred the colorful scenes with murderous Sergeant Luna or the teenaged prostitutes or the eccentric mechanics to the dry scenes with O'Brien the fugitive financier. But this turned out to be a good novel. Compare this with the similarly intriguing Stuart Kaminsky novel Hard Currency.
Book Review: Smith's Strengths and Weaknesses in Spades
Summary: 3 Stars
How rare it is to find a novelist who's both a distinctive stylist and a great storyteller. Martin Cruz Smith is a talented researcher with a wonderful eye for detail, but he does tend to make a dog's breakfast of his storylines.
"Havana Bay" offers everything one has come to expect of Smith -- fabulous local color, an Arkady Renko so dour it's not surprising he wants to kill himself, and plotting that is seriously out-of-kilter.
Actually, the plot premise is one of the best Smith's ever had, far better than the screwy idea behind "Gorky Park," but he blows it. For nearly 300 pages, the story seems to be headed (at a pretty ambling pace, it has to be said) in one direction -- was a death accident, suicide, natural causes, murder? Is the dead man even whom everyone assumes him to be? -- only to reveal itself with about 30 pages to go as actually being about something quite different. What "Havana Bay" is really about could easily have sustained the entire novel, so that the result of this sleight-of-hand is to make the reader feel cheated: nine-tenths of what you've just read turns out to have been a somewhat sleep-inducing, borderline irrelevant tangent, the last tenth hopelessly and unnecessarily rushed.
The authentic spices of Castro's Cuba flavoring an empty reading experience.
Book Review: Sorry. Tooooo slowwww.
Summary: 2 Stars
Martin Cruz Smith can write a compelling novel. He proved this with Gorky Park, which was a great novel (with the first appearance of archetypally gloomy Russian hero Arkady Renko) and a great movie (with a masterful performance by the late Lee Marvin as the prime villain). He has a far better than average command of writing, is capable of elegant, artistic prose. He has a fine eye and ear for description. All this said, Havana Bay simply doesn't do it for me. I labored through this novel from beginning to end. Too little happens, Arkady seems stuck in neutral, and there is little to zero narrative drive. Nothing COMPELLING about this story: some vague fretting about the mysterious death of a Russian spy-bureaucrat that we never learn much about or care about. What little action there is is too sporadic and seems unconnected. The whole business is just too poorly explained in general. Heavy on the steamy atmospherics and frustratingly static in terms of story and action. At the end (finaaaalllly!)I'd lost interest to the point that I didn't care who ended up dead, who did it, or even if Fidel himself was in the final act. You can do better than this turgid plotting, Mr. Smith. I'll be looking forward to your next Arkady Renko. Hint: keep him in something resembling animate motion.Book Review: Still a Good Book
Summary: 4 Stars
I really think this series is this authors best story line and set of characters. When I read some of this other books, I just do not get into the story as much as I do with Arkady. He again creates this dark, brooding lead character that you believe in, even though it seems to be the central casting type for these type of parts. I was concerned that this book took this character, that I know so well, out of Russia - would the author be able to create that overall sense of foreboding that he does so well in Russia? I think so, at least he made the parts of Cuba that may resemble Russia stand out. Overall the story is a good one, with the normal relationship sub plots for Arkady. The mystery holds up to the end and the book has a decent pace. I do think it is not as good as the other three, he is trying to move the story along and that is the difficult part - - we all love aspects of the original Gorky Park and the further the author gets away from that book, the more he has to change to keep the stories somewhat fresh. I think this 4th book was the biggest step, the first three were very close to each other, almost additional chapters to the original work. It is a difficult balance and I think we will really not be able to tell if it is working until the 5th one of the series.Book Review: Renko's character and Cuba's Eros
Summary: 5 Stars
Our investigative hero, Arkady Renko gets the best description of himself in this almost steamy Cuban novel. His enemy, a long time American refugee in Havana says: "The marvelous thing about you, Arkady, is that you're both suicidal and insatiably curious". This sentence gives us a fantastic clue to all Renko's novels as in all of them Arkady touches death willingly and at the same time pushes his way into secrets that sometimes could be better left alone.
Cuba is a better place for Arkady than Russia. He lives fuller, he has sex with happiness and he observes plots and complications that, although resulting in death, are somewhat joyful. In spite of his Russian soul and the encounters with his post-Soviet comrades, he feels the enormous elation of the climate and of Cuban girls. Yes, all that the Cuban men think is sex, which is an astonishment for Renko, whose previous experiences were in ice covered Russian winter. He still manages to push himself into a convoluted plot involving El Commandante, sugar kickbacks and an attractive Cuban female detective whose passion in life seems to be an eradication of prostitution in Cuba.
Smith's powers of observation are high-quality and I wish he would send Arkady to more countries in future novels.