Comrades in Miami: A Novel

From Publishers Weekly What was it like to be a top Cuban intelligence officer during the 1990s? Latour, a Cuban living in Toronto, creates a surprisingly active agenda for Col. Victoria Valiente, the star of the latest book (after 2004's Havana World Series) in his well-received series about life and crime on Castro's island. The physically nondescript Victoria is a genius as well as a natural spymaster, and by the time she finishes impressing the men above her, she's taken charge of the Greater Miami area, recruiting new agents and uncovering double agents working against Cuba. But along with her success comes the knowledge that Castro's regime has become a disaster. Victoria's husband, a computer expert who's been allowed to travel abroad, convinces her they should leave Cuba—and sets up a scheme to electronically transfer $2.7 million in stolen funds to an account in Key West. Things take an ugly turn when a Cuban working for the FBI finds out what's going on, but Latour's fascinating book remains a thing of beauty. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Product Description The master of "Cuban noir" returns with a novel of espionage that follows a Cuban spy couple as they decide to defect to the U.S. with the FBI hot on their tail and 2.7 million dollars in stolen money in their possession. From Booklist When we last encountered Cuban exile Elliot Steil, in Latour's Outcast (2001), he had recently arrived in Miami, rescued in the Florida straits by a family of rafters, and was determined to track down the man who had thrown him overboard. Now it's years later, and Steil is well established as the right-hand man to Reuben Scheindlin, owner of a Miami import-export business. Then his boss dies, and suddenly Steil is thrown into troubled waters again, as the FBI entangles him in their investigation of Mrs. Scheindlin. Steil's long-planned return to Cuba to visit family becomes fraught with danger, as the reluctant spy must gather information for the Americans. Latour, a native Cuban living in Toronto, writes about the island with an unmatched verisimilitude, and this time he combines that realism with an Our Man in Havana wackiness, visible especially in a subplot involving the attempt of a Cuban intelligence director and her husband to defect. Steil makes a sympathetic everyman hero, and the mix of Cuban atmosphere and black humor spices the dish nicely. Bill Ott Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
ASIN: 0802118100
VSKU: KDV.0802118100.G
Condition: Good