Havana (Earl Swagger, Book 3) [Import] [Paperback]

Stephen Hunter (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 452 pages
• Publisher: Simon + Schuster Inc. (April 30, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743487516
• ISBN-13: 978-0743487511
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (64 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Stephen Hunter won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism as well as the 1998 American Society of Newspaper Editors Award for Distinguished Writing in Criticism for his work as film critic at The Washington Post. He is the author of several bestselling novels, including Time to Hunt, Black Light, Point of Impact, and the New York Times bestsellers Havana, Pale Horse Coming, and Hot Springs. He lives in Baltimore.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Captivating Adventure, May 6, 2004

By 

Newt Gingrich (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews
("THE")   

This review is from: Havana: An Earl Swagger Novel (Hardcover)

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.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More literary than some of his other books, June 23, 2005

By 

David W. Nicholas (Van Nuys, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Havana: An Earl Swagger Novel (Earl Swagger Novels) (Mass Market Paperback)

Stephen Hunter has come a long way since he wrote (and I read) The Master Sniper, perhaps two decades ago. I have to say I wasn't very impressed with that book, and it was some years before I picked up another of Hunter's books, Point of Impact as it happened. I still think that's his best book, though Time to Hunt is also very good, and the rest of his books since then are an improvement over his earlier works.

Point of Impact's hero was a retired Marine sniper named Bob Lee Swagger. After writing several books with him in them, Hunter did several involving Bob Lee's father, Earl Swagger, who's a Medal of Honor recipient Marine who returned to the states and became an Arkansas state trooper. The elder Swagger has been the subject of three novels: Hot Springs, Pale Horse Coming, and Havana, the subject of this review. In all three, Hunter does a decent job of putting Earl Swagger into interesting situations, and then having him shoot his way out of them, but frankly I think Havana to be the best of the three. It spends more time dealing with his character, what makes him tick, and why he is built the way he is, mentally and psychologically.

Swagger is a killer, a fighter who enjoys the finality of a gunshot as a way to solve problems and fix disagreements he has with killers and criminals. In the current entry, he's convinced to trundle along to Cuba with the entourage of a local Congressman who's a wheel in the House of Representatives. Earl of course has to keep him out of trouble in a whorehouse, and when the mob figures out why the Congressman's in town (he's investigating whether mob influence is polluting the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo) Earl has to thwart an assassination attempt. Those fans of Point of Impact, however, will realize that Swagger's not on the island just to protect the Congressman: instead, powerful figures in the CIA want a certain young fiery revolutionary named Fidel Castro killed, and they figure Earl's just the guy for the job.

This scenario sets the stage for what's best about the book: a romp through 50s Cuba with Earl and company. There's an improbably erudite Soviet spy (who sounds much more British than Russian, to me), a clumsy Mafia hitman, several annoying CIA types, and a couple of single ladies for Earl to interact with. All of the plot involving those people plays out in the streets of Havana and Santiago, and in the jungles of rural Cuba, each recreated wonderfully by Hunter.

In case you couldn't tell, I enjoyed this book a great deal, and would recommend it to anyone interested in the era, or to those who want a good suspense novel.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Strong entry in Earl Swagger series, October 13, 2003

By 

R. H OAKLEY "roboakley" (Vienna, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Havana: An Earl Swagger Novel (Hardcover)

In an afterword, Hunter explains that he got the book from his well known editor, Michael Korda. Korda gave it to him in four words: "Earl Swagger in Havana." This allows Hunter a rich set of characters to draw on, such as Castro and Meyer Lansky. It also allows him to throw Swagger into a multi-sided situation -- the CIA and Cuban government, the gangsters with ties to both the CIA and the Government but pursuing their own interests as well, and the Soviets, with their interests in creating unrest. Castro plays an important role as a bumbling revolutionary with a gift for speechmaking, some courage and not much else (I doubt that this is an accurate picture of Castro). Swagger is brought to Cuba on pretext, as a body-guard for a ridiculous Congressman and his aide -- the real reason is that the CIA wants to have Swagger kill Castro.

What follows is typical Hunter, gun battles with the weapons described in detail; Hunter's odd ability to create tension by describing events out of chronolocial order (you'll read a vague description of what happened, followed by a flashback that shows what actually happened); and Earl Swagger's ability to one-up any man around him. John Wayne would have loved to have played this character.

There's more humor in this book than usual; an argument between between the terrified Congressman and his even more terrified aide when under fire had me laughing out loud. Castro is also a subject for many jokes, although whether this is deserved or not I can't say. Hemingway makes a brief, but disastorous cameo that unfortunately is in keeping with his behavior, particularly at that time.

I find Earl Swagger a more interesting character than his son, Bob Lee, who was the subject of Hunter's first three novels in the Swagger series. Bob Lee was laconic to the point of making Clint Eastwood in his early westerns sound like a chatterbox. Earl is not much more talkative, but our knowledge of his hard life (see Hot Springs) and his desperate hope that his son will have an easier life (of course he won't) gives him more depth than one would expect for a thriller hero. There is also the knowledge that, unless Hunter engages in a major rewrite of history, that he does not have long to live. Hunter killed off Earl Swagger in 1955 in his first appearance, Black Light.

For those who have read other Swagger books, you will find Hunter reusing to good effect a character from prior books. Frenchy Short is back, and is as devious and crooked as ever. He hero-worships Earl but doesn't hesitate to try to have him killed to serve his own purposes. The Congressman who Earl acts as a bodyguard for is Harry Etheridge. At a later point, Etheridge tells Earl that if Earl signs on the CIA their boys can be friends (the chronology on this won't work but Hunter has admitted that to revising the chronology between books). In fact, Etheridge's son will be the cause of Earl's death and will be involved in trying to kill Bob Lee. Finally, a Soviet spy named Pashin has the same last name as a former spy about to become President of Russia in A Time to Kill, but different first name. However, the character in Havana claims to have many relatives in Soviet intelligence, so maybe they are related.

I'm no gun expert, but did spot a couple of small mistakes Hunter makes. Frenchy Short inexplicably switches guns within a few pages -- Hunter is always very specific about the guns his characters carries. Also, a Russian involved in the Spanish Civil War contempously compares Sherman tanks to the German tanks he saw in Spain. Hunter is thinking of the Panther and Tiger II tanks used by Germany at the end of World War II; those used in Spain may have only been equipped with machine guns.

While I gave this book four stars (it would have been 3 and half if Amazon allowed this), I have to wonder what Hunter will do next. A fourth Earl Swagger book will be hard to write; Hunter's done about as much with this character as he can. It may be that he goes to a stand-alone book like Dirty White Boys orginally was (it was later written into the Swagger books in a way that explains the great Lamar Pye's gunfighting skills. Too bad about Lamar; he's my favorite Hunter character of all time). In any event, I look forward to whatever Hunter produces next. He's shown a sure sense when to move on, as he did when he wrote the first real Earl Swagger book Hot Springs, one of his best.