Cuba Libre (1998) by Elmore Leonard

Activity of the Spanish American War in the Cuban theater, as featured in Cuba Libre by Elmore Leonard.

Book Review
Cuba Libre (1998)
by Elmore Leonard

   Cuba Libre is the great outlier in the Elmore Leonard bibliography, set, of all places, in Cuba immediately before, during and after the Spanish American war.   Martin Amis, in his 1998 interview of Leonard at the Writer's Guild Theater in Beverly Hills, singled-out Cuba Libre as astonishing, and told Leonard he had trouble believing Leonard had written it.  Reading that interview (included at the end of Pagan Babies in Ebook format, and indeed, after the end of this book as well, also read in EBook format), piqued my interest in Cuba Libre, so here I am.

   Calling Cuba Libre sui generis isn't exactly accurate.  Leonard did have his early period of Western fiction, but Cuba Libre represented his first non-contemporary crime fiction novel in over twenty years.  At its heart, Libre has a plot that mirrors other common elements of Leonard's capers:  A crime that involves ripping off bad guys, double crossing, a male protagonist with many strengths but a troubled past, and a female love interest/femme fatale/partner in crime who is young and sexually adventurous.

   As the outlier of his recent bibliography, Cuba Libre is worth pulling out of chronological sequence if you are making your way through the Leonard ouevre, but it ends up reading similar to his other books in terms of plot and character.