Rating: 
Summary: My Favorite of All the Swagger Books
Review: Medal of Honor winner Earl Swagger is recruited to be the bodyguard of self-important Congressman, "Boss" Harry Etheridge, who is going to Cuba supposedly to check out vice and criminal activity at Guantanamo. But the real purpose of the trip is to con Earl into killing Fidel Castro, who has been making speeches calling for the overthrow of the Batista regime.Meanwhile, the Russians have released prisoner Zek 4715, a veteran of military campaigns in Spain and Germany, known as Speshnev to protect the young firebrand. Speshnev is a Soviet version of Swagger, even to the point of living by a code of honor. In fact, in my opinion, Speshnev kind of steals the show. He has the perfect opportunity to kill Swagger in a Cuban jail, but he protects him instead, can't kill an unarmed man, don't cha know. Fans of the Swaggers, Earl and Bobby Lee, have come to expect a lot of violence in the service of justice and they won't be disappointed here, though HAVANA isn't quite as bloody as past Swagger stories. Also Hunter seems to flesh out his characters a little more in this novel, making them more human. I thought about this book for quite a bit after I finished and I have to say this is my favorite book in the series and I am eagerly waiting for the next one. Review submitted by Captain Katie Osborne
Rating: 
Summary: 2 1/2 Stars -- Fair At Best!
Review: Stephen Hunter has been one of my favorite authors since his book, The Day Before Midnight, and I've loved all of his Swagger books, particularly those featuring Bob Lee Swagger. However, Hunter's latest, Havana, was a major disappointment to me. The plot - about the CIA's recruitment of Earl Lee Swagger to Havana to assassinate Fidel Castro - is very simplistic and predictable. The characters are poorly developed and one-dimensional, including some real-life people who appear in this book, such as Fidel Castro, Meyer Lansky and Ernest Hemingway. Even Earl Lee Swagger is not as interesting as in Hot Springs and Pale Horse Coming. Unlike the non-stop excitement and action that permeates all of Hunter's previous books, the suspense in Havana is much more tepid and very sporadic. Very little in the way of suspense really happens until the last 75-100 pages and even then, as I mentioned, you'll probably be able to predict most, if not all, of what eventually occurs. I know that criticizing this book will probably generate many "unhelpful" votes from Hunter's many fans who are not willing to accept that one of his Swagger books could be deserving of less than 4 stars. However, I'm willing to take this risk since my primary concern is to spare you from - or at least prepare you for - a sub-par performance from Hunter. Hopefully, this review is helpful to you in deciding whether or not you want to read Havana.
Rating: 
Summary: Please, let Earl rest in peace.
Review: Earl Swagger is dead. His death is described in one of Hunter's earlier, and much, much better books. Please, Stephen, let the poor guy rest with dignity. I am a big fan of Stephen Hunter's previous books. This one is definitely the worst in his impressive run, starting with "Dirty White Boys." The author really needs to find some fresh characters and stories, and not continue to rehash the same old. The book flowed well, but the main character seemed very uncomfortable in his own skin. Definitely not the Earl Swagger of the previous books, but a twisted carricature of himself, constantly wondering what the hell he was doing in that novel. Uncharacteristically of Hunter, the supporting characters are quite weak and undeveloped. Castro himself is portrayed as a babbling megalomaniac idiot, which, whatever you may think of him, is certainly not the case. Overall, the book was a dissapointment.
Rating: 
Summary: "Everybody hated Castro, except of course the people."
Review: Havana, 1953, all tawdry glamour and heady excitement, lures opportunists of all types with its irresistible promises of financial and political gain. Author Hunter wastes not a moment in drawing the reader into the complexity of Cuban life as he reveals the chances ambitious men, many of them Americans, are willing to take in the economic and political free-for-all which has accompanied Fulgencio Batista's seizure of the presidency in a recent coup. American interests, including the interests of American mob boss Meyer Lansky, Batista's friend of more than thirty years, are being served by Batista's dictatorship. Hunter recreates the tension-filled jockeying for power and the no-holds-barred violence which accompany it by presenting a large cast of characters representing the various elements contending with each other for dominance in Havana. Earl Swagger, a former State Policeman from Arkansas and a Medal of Honor winner, has been hired to be bodyguard for the venal Congressman Harry Etheridge, who believes that the American gangsters in Cuba are trying to muscle in on contracts for all the services at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay. Mob boss Meyer Lansky is now thoroughly entrenched in Havana, colluding with American corporations which need cheap sugar, labor, and fruit. The Soviets have assigned a parolee from Siberia to "handle" Fidel Castro, whom they are trying to educate and groom for higher office. American Central Intelligence has set up shop in Havana, though various station officers have formed "off-campus" alliances which will leave them independently wealthy. The U.S. Navy, the Cuban secret police, especially a torturer who specializes in slitting eyeballs, and even Ernest Hemingway are involved in the action. Concentrating almost exclusively on his plots, rather than his characters, most of whom are stereotypes, Hunter does a terrific job of juggling, keeping all the balls in the air. The pace never flags, the action is non-stop, and because it takes place on a small island, the reader expects the characters to interact normally and their lives to overlap. What would appear to be improbable or coincidental in a wider context appears normal within the limited boundaries of Cuba, and the six or seven subplots develop a fairly full picture of life on the island which feels realistic. The gruesome torture scenes, and the concluding scenes with Swagger, in which he feels the need for a final sort of vengeance, seem geared more to film than fiction, though these are minor quibbles for a book which moves swiftly and smoothly from one crisis to the next as the reader, totally involved in the intricacies of Cuban political and social history, remains fully engaged in an exciting novel which is great fun to read. Mary Whipple
Rating:
Summary: A Captivating Adventure
Review: Stephen Hunter has a great knack for country attitudes, good shooting, complex stories and politics.
In "Havana" Hunter captures a moment in time when Castro is just emerging (the Yankees having failed to offer him a $500 signing bonus) and Batista is back in power with the help of the American mob.
Just as in "Hot Springs" where Hunter resurrected the great pre-Las Vegas center of gambling and prostitution (matched in that era only by Youngstown), here he reminds us that Havana in the early 1950s was a city of power seekers, tourist pleasures and American and Cuban mobster domination and corruption.
He weaves together a brilliant Soviet agent, Earl Swagger (hated by the Soviet system for his individuality and protagonist of almost half Hunter's novels), the CIA, the American mob, Fidel Castro and the Cuban secret police into a wonderfully complex and constantly intriguing story.
His characterizations of a young Castro are worth the entire book: "Speshnev looked hard at him and, try as he could, only saw a familiar type, thrown up by revolutions and wars the world over. An opportunist with a lazy streak, and also a violent one... No vision beyond the self, but a willingness to use the vernacular of the struggle for his own private careerism." (p. 101)
"He does carry on don't he? He reminds me of a movie star. They get famous too young and they never recover. They always think they're important." Earl Swagger on young Fidel (p 319)
Whether for fun or learning or both, this is a worthwhile novel.
Rating:
Summary: The genesis of Castro's Cuba
Review: The inordinately talented Stephen Hunter again resurrects his sharkskin tough, Marine Medal of Honor winning Arkansas state policeman Earl Swagger, in his latest novel, Havana. Swagger is hoodwinked into serving as the bodyguard for local congressman Harry Etheridge who is heading a governmental investigation in corrupt 1952 Cuba. Swagger, in reality, due to his extensive and decorated police and military background is recruited by CIA number two man in Havana, Walter "Frenchy" Short as an assassin. Short, of questionable moral character had been partnered with Swagger during his previous exploits in cleaning up the unbridled town of Hot Springs. His target is the brash, verbose, narcissistic young lawyer Fidel Castro. Other forces were operative in the unscrupulous Cuban government headed by Batista. American gangsters headed by Meyer Lansky were reaping in profits from gambling, drugs and prostitution and therefore at odds with Castro's revolutionary ideas. The Communist presence was also at work, lead by seasoned Jewish revolutionary Speshnev. He was assigned to nuture and coddle the inexperienced Castro and mold him until a worthwhile puppet for Moscow. Swagger, with CIA backing, was forced to act within the morass of varying dangerous factions whose goals were vastly different. Hunter with an appealing blend of fiction and historical fact creates a descriptive and intriguing story that whets the appetite for more adventures starring the Swagger family.
Rating:
Summary: Third Earl Swagger Novel is okay, but Not the Best of them
Review: After "Hot Springs" and especially after "Pale Horse Coming" I couldn't wait to get a look at the latest of the Earl Swagger novels, "Havana." Unfortunately though, Hunter just didn't deliver in this third installment. In the back of the book, Stephen Hunter acknowledges that A) he was struggling to write this next novel and B) the idea to send Earl to Havana was not his idea. Personally, I believe this shows through in places. At times it almost seemed that Earl didn't fit in with the plot, was kind of made to fit even. Yes, the gunfights and such persist. We even see Earl in the role of "sniper" (see Hunter's incredible book "Point of Impact" for a great sniper novel) but it's not enough to win over a tried and true Stephen Hunter fan. Hunter has done better. The good points though are the return of Frenchy Short, a great character from the first Earl novel, "Hot Springs." The setting for pre-Castro Cuba and the interesting historical twist of including Fidel as a key character are also well done. Unfortunately, Hunter seems to get too caught up with these other characters and misses the fact that it's our hero Earl that we've come to hear about.
Rating:
Summary: The Sheriff goes to Havana
Review: The gist of the story is that Earl Swagger is tapped by the CIA to go to Cuba and assassinate an up and coming firebrand named Fidel Castro. We know that never happened, but Hunter weaves a skillful tale around historical fact and good speculative fiction. Stephen Hunter does a great job of recreating Cuba before the commies took over and describes the interwoven world of secret policemen, Russian Spies, American Spies and Italian gangsters. Earl has his struggles, but he is the moral force we came to know in HOT SPRINGS. While this book is not PALE HORSE COMING (how many books like that does a writer have inside of themselves), it is another great read from an extraordinarily gifted author. I have no idea why anyone would give this book less than five stars. Pick it up today.
Rating:
Summary: Great story but Hunter needs to move on
Review: I have an idea for his next novel. How about an elite German Army sniper in the closing days of the Battle for Berlin who manages to hold off half the Red Army while succeeding in helping the real Adolf Hitler escape to South America? That would be one hell of a story!
Rating:
Summary: Here we go again!
Review: This is a classic case of male fantasism at its highest. Merely a sequel to HOT SPRINGS, using some of the same characters in a more exotic locale some seven years later, but his "Big Noise" is nastier and on a much grander scale. Mr. Hunter was winner of a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 and seems on a downhill slide. He does pepper this one with luminaries such as Ernest Hemingway and Desi Arnaz, and the orator/attorney Castro who went on to take Cuba and keep it. He was clearly a man of destiny. This continuing saga of Earl (a big man like J. Edgar Hoover) shows the sordidness of life in the fifties there. Much of the action takes place at Carnival in 1953. He had settled down in Arkansas after the fiasco at Hot Springs and even come to terms with the memory of his brutal father -- so much so as to move his wife and son to the family farm and carry on with his life. Teaching his nine-year-old to kill innocent animals, just as his dad had started him on the road to death and destruction, he is lured to another adventure from which he may not return. Apparently lacking some common sense, he faces down the evil gangsters in a corrupt world of lust, gambling, Russian takeovers, and petty criminals. Triumph, revenge, justification, and retribution were the goals of this gunfighter. The Russians were treacherous, always ready with blackmail. Everybody respects the warrior, right? I hope Mr. Hunter will move on and get out of this hole he has made. Everybody's a 'pawn in someone else's game' at times. If this man can't be a bonafide hero in his own right, let him rest.
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