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.
Rating: 
Summary: A good adventure thriller set in 1950s Cuba
Review: This is a good one. Besides Hunter's continuation of the Swagger family history, a plus in itself, it is also replete with historical and semi-historical material which brought back memories. In one incident, Gunter sort of "took a shot" at Papa Hemingway--made him out to be a drunken boor--and maybe he was, but I loved Hemingway's writing, and thought better of him. It reminded me a little of what Steinbeck did to the memory of Doc Ricketts, in Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday. Ir made Steinbeck very unpopular with the people in the MOnterey area that I knew who knew and admired Ricketts.
But, all this is really beside the point: if you are writing about that period in Cuba, and you leave out Castro and Trujillo, you may as well have written about Long Island. He works them in nicely--especially Fidel.
So, this is another great novel from the mind of Stephen Hunter. It is well-written, as are they all, and entertaining, exciting, suspensefull, and makes you come back for more.
Very good. even if he does knock the Navy from time to time.
Joseph (Joe) Pierre, USN (Ret)
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