Book Review: Havana Bay

Havana Bay by Martin Cruz Smith

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I was looking for some light bedtime reading, and looked through our bookshelves and picked up some books that I wasn't sure if I had read or not, and then checked on my computer and found that I had read them, but they had proved to be rather forgettable. Then I picked up this book, which has been lying around for ages, but I hadn't read it.

It was quite an interesting read.

Russian investigator Arkady Renko goes to Cuba to find out what had happened to a dead Russian, a sugar attache at the Russian Embassy in Cuba, who was found dead after he had been missing for several days. Renko wants the Cuban authorities to investigate his death, but finds that they are reluctant to do so. Since the fall of the Bosheviks from power the Russians have downsized their embassy in Cuba and the remaining Russians are not very popular, and Russians investigating possible crimes on Cuban soil are even less so.

Renko soon finds that something big is going on, something bigger than he first suspected, and the more he discovers, the bigger it gets.

To say motre would reveal too much of the plot, but there is also lots of local colour, and some interesting sidelights on Afro-Caribbean religion, and the role that semi-religious secret societies like Abakua play in Cuban society.




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