The Washington Times
published my review of Nelson DeMille’s The Cuban Affair.
In October 2015 author Nelson
DeMille and his wife toured Cuba. Mr. DeMille made good use of his field
research trip and in his new action-adventure novel “The Cuban Affair” we are
offered his wry observations and running commentary on Cuba via his fictional
character, Daniel “Mac” MacCormick.
Mac, a U.S. Army veteran who
served as a combat infantry officer in Afghanistan, has settled in Key West,
Florida. Mac, like Mr. DeMille’s other well-known character, John Corey, is an
irreverent, laid back and wisecracking tough guy.
Like Ernest Hemingway’s Key
West character Harry Morgan in his novel “To Have and Have Not,” Mac is a
charter boat captain. And like Harry Morgan, Mac’s boat is hired for a trip to
Cuba by some shady characters.
Ernest Hemingway looms large
in this novel, as Mac discovers that the late, great writer is revered publicly
in communist Cuba and there are statues, signs, T-shirts and photos of him in
nearly every bar and restaurant he was said to have frequented when he lived
there in the 1940s. So much so, that one Havana bar advertised proudly that Mr.
Hemingway, “did not” drink there.
… Mac is asked to join a Yale
University tour of Cuba with Sara, who offers the boat captain 50,000 dollars
to also have his first mate take his boat to join a fishing tournament in Cayo
Guillermo, Cuba.
“It was a favorite deep-sea
fishing place of Ernesto,” Carlos tells Mac. “Hemingway, not Guevara.” Must be
an old Cuban joke, Mac thinks.
In addition to the charter
fee, she offers Mac two million dollars if he will travel with her on the tour
and help her recover the 60 million dollars her Cuban grandfather banker hid in
a cave in Cuba before he fled Castro’s revolution. Once they’ve recovered the
money, her plan is to meet up with his boat and escape from the island with the
loot. Mac and Jack sign on.
You can read the rest of the
review via the below link:
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