Havana Blue (Mario Conde Mystery 3) (Mario Conde Investigates)

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Crumbling pastel-colored facades line its streets, parked vintage cars evoke times past, live music permeates the air. The male characters are obsessed with women, but it doesn't go much deeper than the appreciation of anatomy. By drawing inspiration from fine British design traditions, we are able to connect with those who love and appreciate this rich, craft heritage.

Although the digressions with lengthy sentences and paragraphs slow the pace, Padura doesn't lose sight of the plot and brings it to a satisfactory conclusion.Mario's boss has a romantic attachment to Havana cigars, which he smokes slowly and with orgasmic pleasure. The rich characterizations and bittersweet remembrances of the good old days, 20 years before, play as great a role in the book as the investigation of a missing man. Whisky, cigars and black coffee with sugar aid the crime-solving, as does sex with the beautiful Tamara. Using laser technology, the initials are subtly engraved on the left lens of the sunglasses and on the inner tips of the optical glasses. This series offers crime thrillers with the twist of the detective (the melancholic Inspector Conde) needing to deal with the political intrigues of Communist Cuba.

Police lieutenant Mario Conde, known as the Count, investigates the disappearance of an up-and-coming government trade official, who also happens to be an old classmate, married to Tamara, a girl Conde and his friends fantasized about back in high school. Every stage of the probe is punctuated by nostalgic flashbacks-back in the day, Conde and his best friend Skinny Carlos hopelessly loved Tamara and her sister Aymara-followed by Conde's self-recrimination over his current mediocrity. I'm off to Scandinavia soon (in my literary travels--actually I'm off to Barcelona in a month in more literal travel terms), but taking a side trip to Cuba first, by means of Leonardo Padura's Havana Blue (that's the title in English of the third of his quartet-plus-one of novels featuring detective Mario Conde, the Count).Since the book is about Cuba, we have cigars, food, some music, rum and cheap wine, drinking and hangovers. Rafael disappears and the questioning of those who knew him - which takes up the bulk of the narrative - tells his story, illustrating different facets of him and of Cuba's recent history. A novelist, journalist, and critic, he is the author of several novels, one collection of essays, and a volume of short stories.