Havana Gold By Leonardo Padura
Recipe:
Take beans: match equally with rice.
Season liberally with four letter swears.
Have bottles of rum at the ready.
Serve with huge chunks of rough torn bread.
Simmer in a steamy aromatic heat.
Finish with crude sex and a fat cigar.
Voila – Havana.
Leonardo Padura’s book, Havana Gold, moves like treacle on a cold day.
It’s a great read for menopausal men who have mislaid their chutzpah. In Havana Gold, they will savour the tale of men fed by doting house devotees, who incinerate their lives caring for aging adolescent men.
The one wild sexual encounter is managed by a powerful predatory woman who satisfies her lust and then dumps the aging detective Conde, opting for the security of her financially stable, doctor husband.
Although Peter Bush is apparently a renowned translator, I intuit that the flavour of the original writing is lost in translation.
Paduro is also an award winner. However, I would only read him in future as inspiration for an art work – certainly not for his mystery plots.
Find Havana Gold by Leonardo Padura in the SMSA Library catalogue
Sunny Seagull
Member of the SMSA Mystery & Crime Reading Group
