Cuba Libre

Amazon.com Review Elmore Leonard has a long track record of creating memorable characters--enough to bring life to many movies, the two most notable being and (based on Leonard's Rum Punch ). Both are pretty good movies, but the novels are much better. Today Leonard writes mostly ''crime'' novels, labeled as such because his characters struggle to be good in a world so full of temptation that some kind of crime is always involved. Cuba Libre finds Leonard reaching for a broader audience than those which appreciated either his crime novels or the westerns he once wrote, which he accomplishes by combining elements of both. Ben Tyler is a cowboy who robs banks, but only those that contain money of people who owe but won't pay him--he only takes what they owe. Charlie Burke is a businessman who buys horses cheap in the west, then sells them to exporters, while heroine Amelia Brown is the mistress of one of the truly bad men in the novel and struggles with dilemmas similar to those endured by other cast members. Begining around the time that the Maine is sunk in Havana Harbor and ending when Teddy and others storm San Juan Hill, the story is at its best when its colorful characters are turned loose in one of the novel's colorful settings. If you like Leonard, you'll love Cuba Libre , and if--for some reason--you haven't yet discovered the author, prepare for a real treat. From School Library Journal YA-This book has something to interest almost everyone. Set against the rich and compelling backdrop of Cuba during its struggle for independence, the story includes bank robbery, cattle rustling, love, suspense, and action-packed adventure. Realistic, memorable characters come to life in the scheming twists and turns of a complex plot. Leonard writes in an easy-to-follow style; his bad guys are truly BAD, and readers find themselves rooting for the hero and heroine as they hide, the Spanish Civil guards in hot pursuit. The plot is larded with history, beginning with the sinking of the USS Maine in the harbor of Havana, and ending with Roosevelt and his Rough Riders's charge up San Juan Hill. A rare glimpse of the Spanish-American War and the fight for Cuban independence. Anita Short, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. “A wild ride through Cuba during the Spanish-American War.” —Miami Herald“Not only his finest novel but one that transcends the limits of its genre and is worthy of being evaluated as literary fiction.” —Houston ChronicleBefore Grand Master Elmore Leonard earned his well-deserved reputation as “the best writer of crime fiction alive” (Newsweek), he penned some of the finest western fiction to ever appear in print. (The classics Hombre, Valdez is Coming, and 3:10 to Yuma were just a few of his notable works.) With his extraordinary Cuba Libre, Leonard ingeniously combines all of his many talents and delivers a historical adventure/caper/western/noir like none other. The creator of U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, star of Raylan, Pronto, Riding the Rap, and TV’s Justified, spins a gloriously exciting yarn about an American horse wrangler who escapes a date with a Cuban firing squad to join forces with a powerful sugar baron’s lady looking to make waves and score big in and around Spanish-American War-torn Havana in 1898. Everything you love about Leonard’s fiction—and more—is evident in Cuba Libre. No wonder the New York Times Book Review enthusiastically declared him “a literary genius.” Leonard's famous "Tropical Western" delivers a smuggler, a sugar baron, and one smart, pistol-hot lady to Havana during the Spanish-American War.War in Cuba isn't Ben Tyler's concern. Still, sailing mares and guns into Havana harbor in 1898 - right past the submerged wreckage of the U.S. battleship Maine - may not be the most intelligent thing the recently prison-sprung horse wrangler ever did. Neither is shooting one of the local Guardia, though the pompous peacock deserved it. Now Tyler's sitting tight in a vermin-infested Cuban stockade waiting to face a firing squad. But he's not dying until he gets the money he's owed from a two-timing American sugar baron. And there's one smart, pistol-hot lady at the rich man's side who could help Ben get everything he's got rightfully coming... even when the whole damn island's going straight to hell. A novel on the Spanish-American War featuring adventurer Ben Tyler, an Arizona horse dealer. Just as he arrives in Cuba with a shipment of guns and horses, war breaks out. To get his money, he is sucked into fighting between Spain, the U.S. and Cuban revolutionaries seeking independence from both.

This rip-roaring jaunt into history sizzles with the passion of lovers, the violence of nations, and the wild courage of freedom fighters crying out to their firing squads: Viva Cuba Libre!

New York Times Book Review

The greatest crime writer of our time, perhaps ever!

TYLER ARRIVED WITH THE HORSES February eighteenth, three days after the battleship Maine blew up in Havana harbor.