Customer Reviews

Hemingway Deadlights: A Mystery

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4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What a great escape! This is a wonderful book to throw in your beach bag. Make sure you pack a cold cocktail (or three) and maybe a platter of shrimp. It was great to get out of day to day reality and jump into the past, with a great blend of a real time and place, wrapped around both true and fictional events and that enshroud the real, but fictionalized character of Ernest Hemingway. This bridged the gaps between summer escape novel, historical fiction and mystery. A sordid, sexy, steamy romp. Atkinson paints a rich tapestry to be savored. A page-turner, that keeps you glued till the end.
-Susan B.
New York

I once had a Hemingway Year. I started the year in Tanzania studying field biology and reading Hemingway out of the Arusha library. A couple months later I was in Europe reading more Hemingway out of another library. My timing was good and I hitchhiked to Pamplona for the Running of the Bulls (La Feria de San Fermin).

My interest in Ernest Hemingway led me to Michael Atkinson's first novel, Hemingway Deadlights. I enjoy books where the author fictionalizes the lives of writers whose work I know.

Atkinson picks up with Hemingway in 1956, years after the wars and Hemingway's life in Europe. The US is heavy into Cuba, Castro is an outlaw, and there are vestiges of the McCarthy-era paranoia. Hemingway is on his fourth wife, Mary, and staying at his home in Key West while Mary waits for him in Cuba. The wave he rode after winning of the Noble Prize in Literature for The Old Man and the Sea is waning and Hemingway is writing sporadically, drinking heavily, and breaks his leg when he falls of the roof while shooting at a gecko.

When a casual friend of Hemingway's is murdered, the local officials pay little attention. Hemingway, with his wariness towards authority, assumes clandestine issues are afoot. With this premise, Atkinson creates Ernest Hemingway; murder investigator.

Early in the book, I found Atkinson's portrayal of Hemingway to be overly bumbling and absurd. For example, Atkinson wrote, "Hemingway leapt. Too far, as it happens - like a flying squirrel, the man's khaki-dressed, potbellied frame soared narrowly over the top of the tree, immediately beyond which lay a rock garden, rose bushes, and more cement." Hemingway is too real a person for me, the detail and ridiculousness of the tone fit more with the behavior of Janet Evanovich's character, Stephanie Plum, than author and adventurer Ernest Hemingway.

Atkinson stopped trying to remake Hemingway as the character got into the murder investigation. There was Hemingway's drinking and womanizing and the self-confident behavior grounded in a lifetime of machismo, adventure, and notoriety. It was enjoyable to be transported to the nascent tourist mecca of Key West where Hemingway was dining at Sloppy Joe's and taking a ferry to Cuba. The Hemingway character finally felt like Hemingway.

With Hemingway Deadlights, Atkinson has written an entertaining novel both for Hemingway fans and for others who are not familiar with his work. The character finds himself in situations that draw upon the Hoover-era energy of distrust common at the time. Hemingway meets Castro and Che, has problems with a variety of feds, and is threatened by shadowy underworld figures. I found lots of references to the Hemingway life the world has been aware of, and to events and attitudes that created Hemingway's voice. I look forward to reading Atkinson's second Hemingway novel, released earlier this year. (Initially submitted to Luxury Reading's website.)

[...]
Set in 1956, this first outing in a new series featuring Ernest Hemingway as sleuth finds the graying Nobel laureate with his leg in a plaster cast after getting plastered and falling off the roof of his Key West home where he's holed up for some creative drinking away from the sour, disapproving gaze of über-bitch wife, Mary (a wonderfully nasty characterization) back in Cuba. His quiet bender, alas, soon is rudely disrupted by the unusual murder of a fisherman/smuggler crony. Angered by the cops' shelving the case, Papa takes up the trail, leading him through a dizzying maze of Hungarian thugs, the CIA, FBI, Fidel and Che, horny coeds, amorous spies, and the mob (why not), during which he's threatened, chased, followed, kidnapped, and shot at--and that's nothing compared to what Mary wants to do to him! Atkinson knows his subject well but has come neither to praise nor bury Hemingway, who is fat, stubborn, violent, tough, crafty, and alcoholic (he sucks down enough booze to float navies), but has a sense of friendship and justice. With equal doses of mystery and espionage, the story also is presented with great humor. Hemingway Deadlights is a tasty cocktail of suspense, sex, laughs, and literature. Though Hemingway didn't do these things, he damn well should have. Mystery Readers will love it.--Mike Rogers, LJX/LJ

I like to think that I have a pretty good imagination, but I just couldn't stretch it enough to for this new mystery series. I loved the concept and got a few good laughs from some of the famous author's antics in this novel (in which he decides to track down the murderer of an acquaintance of his in Key West), but truth to be told, I just didn't buy into it. Throughout the book, it was difficult for me to believe that Ernest Hemingway would have actually have *done* any of this.

The writing is very good (a tad crass, but this *is* Hemingway we're talking about), the dialog is fun, but I never quite believed Hemingway's motives for tracking down a murderer. And once Federal agents, the Mafia and the Cuban heavies of Batista get involved, Hemingway's continued pursuit of the culprit became too unbelievable to get maximum enjoyment from the story.

On the plus side: I did enjoy how the author worked in the people in Hemingway's personal life, such as his wife at that time and his sons. That was an added bonus that was very much appreciated by this reader.

So do I recommend it? That depends. If you enjoy mysteries with famous authors as protagonists then you probably won't want to miss this one. But if you're looking for a cozy mystery, this isn't it. Neither is it a serious thriller. This is supposed to be the first in a series of mysteries starring the famous author, so if you like a series this might interest you, as well.

Happy reading.

I count myself as a Hemingway aficionado of sorts since I attend the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum and Education Center's semi-annual writers'retreats in Piggott, AR. I selected this book from "new arrivals" at our county library on the basis of the title, of course. The mix of fact with fiction was OK, but the explicit gore, sex, and the ubiquitous use of the "f-word left me almost ready to take it back unfinished. However, I didn't. In fact, the last two hours (past midnight, even)it took to finish it passed by quickly. I'm glad I persevered, just to be able to say I did. It took some skipping over certain paragraphs to get there. Not a prude; just don't like the details of gory murder messes.

Hemingway Deadlights did what I love an Author to do - inspire me and entertain me!!! It is a must read!! I laughed throughout the book. I just couldn't put the book down once I started reading. After reading the book I found myself googling about Hemingway. I felt there was also great film references from that era which was great fun - very entertaining. I am now inspired and am trying to plan a trip to Key West to visit this place where Hemingway lived. Once I get to Key West I'm sure to have a drink and toast to Hemingway Deadlights. Cheers.

When I had to read Hemingway in high school, I hated it. All of it. I liked some of the story concepts, but I just didn't care for Hemingway's writing style. On the other hand, I thought Hemingway as a person would himself make a good character for a novel. How delightful that Michael Atkinson thought so, too.

I always imagined Hemingway as being kind of a jerk, and an over-the-top personality. In this book, he is exactly that, and that's a good thing.

The story is fun and full of great imagination. The author does an outstanding job of setting the scene and putting the characters through their paces. It's a quick read and much lighter than Atkinson's other, more somber work (much of which which has often left me reaching for a dictionary far too frequently).

"Hemingway Deadlights" is an entertaining mystery--but it's not too silly. Sort of like brain candy that you can chew for awhile. I enjoyed the characters and storyline enough that getting to whodunit wasn't really a critical issue. I simply enjoyed a fun story about a literary giant portrayed in a highly entertaining manner.

Enjoyable!

You needn't be a fan of Papa the novelist to enjoy the blustering, mercurial, dipsomaniacal rake at the center of Michael Atkinson's hilariously hard-boiled debut mystery. But Hemingway enthusiasts will surely delight as the famous author navigates the seediest corners of Key West and Havana, all the while dispensing his opinions of other writers (Wallace Stevens is not among his favorites), and enduring the taunts of those who think he ought to get a better Spanish translator.

The questions most readers of this historical fictionalized mystery about the famous writer will concern how much of this book is true or at least based on actual events, and are these characters who really peopled Hemingway's life in Key West and Cuba?
Obviously Michael Atkinson meticulously researched the life and work of the Nobel Prize winning American author whose novels included For Whom the Bells Toll, The Sun Also Rises and The Old Man and the Sea. It's hard to believe that Hemingway was usually as drunk as he is portrayed in this book. It's equally difficult to believe that his mind could actually function, reason and remember anything that happened to him when he was pickled from the time he awoke in the morning until he passed out cold at night.
This book is fascinating both because of the portrait it paints of Ernest "Papa" Hemingway and the tropical sun drenched world he mostly hid from in a fog bank of alcoholism and the skill of the writer. The book's author also manages to mimic some of Hemingway's writing style. Samples of this include the following:
"...where tourists swarm like an invading species, bursting the seams of cartoonized taverns, curio shops and the nearby aquarium. For a local poobah with international face recognition, Is was the most dangerous spot in town.
"The buses were parked in rows like sunning alligators; the people, innocent as individuals but, as a milling horde, ravenous and stupid as termites, bustled about in their striped shirts, straw hats, knee-high socks and sunglasses, wallets in hand...Holy crap, you're...
"No, I'm not. I'm just a look-alike."
"...OMIGOD, it's Him! Sign My Bell Tolls, Mr. Hemingway!..."
In the book one of Hemingway's long-time drinking buddies turns up in the surf near the docks with an ancient 60 pound whaling harpoon through his chest. Since Hemingway knows the local police and FBI won't spend more than a few hours filling out paperwork about the murder of this nobody, sometimes smuggler, with no relatives and a real name nobody knew, he decides it is up to him, Ernest Hemingway, to both pay for the burial of this mysterious drinking companion as well as find out who and why he was killed. Thus begins this mystery adventure.
According to the author Hemingway was almost a Demi-God in the Key West area as well as in Cuba where he also lived. Because he was so famous he was almost untouchable as well as bullet proof. None of mysterious characters inhabiting these two lawless areas wanted to attract any publicity by harming or killing "Papa" even if it was still a frontier area in the mid 1950s and prairie justice was the norm. Hemingway really only feared the mobsters because unlike the local arms smugglers, drug dealers, foreign dictators in exile, FBI and CIA agents as well as Castro and Batista's men, the mobsters had no fear of making even their local hard-drinking and constantly brawling Nobel Prize celebrity disappear from the planet.
Fortunately when a thoroughly soused Hemingway was introduced to Meyer Lansky in an obscure Cuban bar, they ended up talking about books--Hemingway's and John Dos Passos's The U.S.A. Trilogy, a book that Lansky loved. "Even with enough ethanol in his system to run a farm tractor, Hemingway knew to be scared and respectful." Ditto for his secret meeting in the mountains with Che and Fidel who both turned out to be particular admirers of The Old Man and the Sea. The reader of this mystery has to ask himself did Hemingway actually meet Lansky, Che and Fidel? In the book he thinks about writing a detailed diary entry about the events and sending the sealed information to his lawyer to be forwarded to the "N.Y. Times" in case he should indeed disappear without a trace. After all, "these Batista guys, they'd check to see if a rattlesnake was sleeping by kicking it." In other words they were not the smartest goons in the world and one really had to fear, respect and stay out of their way because of their sheer stupidity.
Did these clandestine meetings really take place and the descriptions of them can now be found with Hemingway's papers in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston? That's one of the nagging questions left by the book and the author doesn't help answer those questions with any notes or acknowledgements about writing the mystery story and that's too bad. Those loose ends leave the readers feeling a touch unsatisfied.
The book also discusses Hemingway's writing style, his frequent writing blocks, and the foreboding death of his father who committed suicide in 1929 by "swallowing" the barrel of gun in his mouth and squeezing the trigger.
Assuming that the reader can accept the writer's conclusion that Hemingway was able to mentally function even when pickled with alcohol, this is a nice reminder of Hemingway, his life and work.
Oh, by the way the "deadlights" in this story were "small, thick windows looking out and down under the water" of the boat's hull. They couldn't be easily observed in the hull. Naturally, important parts of this mystery story involve fishing boats plying the Gulf waters between Key West and Cuba and smugglers, revolutionaries and the CIA. How could it be any other way? It's about THE old man and the sea.