'Cuba' falls into predictable plot

Cuba Libre

Delacorte Press

HH

The seemingly inexorable Elmore Leonard renaissance continued in force throughout 1998. Actually, renaissance is a little misleading, for the Detroit-area author's career continues to experience achievements unprecedented for Leonard - that is, until the last couple of years.

It's not as if Leonard, who now lives in Birmingham, was suddenly rescued from Tin Pan Alley. His dozens of crime novels, dating back to the '60s, had already earned the author a comfortable living and a dedicated cult of followers. He was also a critics' darling, by general acclamation the best crime writer alive.

"Cuba Libre," it turns out, is a departure for Leonard. It is not only a return to the Western milieu that Leonard dabbled in very early in his career, but it is a piece of historical fiction deeply entrenched in its distinctive setting: Cuba 1898, squarely at the outbreak of the Spanish-American War.

Fans need not fear, however: "Cuba Libre" is still essentially a Leonard crime novel, chiefly concerned with the potential score of a lifetime and questions of who's-scamming-who.

This time, Leonard's endearing rogue of a protagonist is Ben Tyler, an expert cowboy and convicted bank robber who, upon his release, gets talked into a scheme running guns to the Cuban insurgents by his old cowpunching boss Charlie Burke. Of course, the scheme first goes very wrong, then develops into something abundantly more complicated, involving train robbery, kidnapping (real and staged), press fraud, and a desirable yet dangerous female accomplice.

Leonard's strengths, his lightning pacing and his unmatched genius for dialogue, are intact, and the dialogue does not glare with period incredibility despite its millennial pizzazz.

Overall, however, matters are not up to the level of Leonard's best, like "Get Shorty" and "Riding the Rap." A lot has to do with Leonard's interest in the historical backdrop of the igniting war, about which the reader is frequently told. Leonard's digressions come off as just that, diluting the unique Leonard humor.

One gets the impression that the author simply milked the centennial opportunity to include a topic he evidently enjoys, considering the much smaller history lesson on Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders he worked into "Get Shorty."

Furthermore, some plot twists seem more predictable than prime Dutch Leonard turf ought to, including certain characters who practically wear neon tattoos that they will, say, die early, or double-cross our hero.

Nonetheless, the craftsmanship and gusto still grabs the reader, who ought to need no more than a long afternoon to tear through a breakneck 350 pages. It would take a true believer, though, to shell out the funds for the hardcover edition of what is truly a born paperback.

- Jeff Druchniak

01-11-99