<<Just finished Jose Latour's Outcast and felt it was
one of the best reads of this year. Did I miss comments about
it when it was nominated for an Edgar?>>
I also enjoyed OUTCAST. Especially well-done, I thought, were
Latour's insights into day to day Cuban life--the
frustrations, cynicism and black humor adopted by Cubans to
deal with very real food shortages, insensitive bureaucrats,
and dead-end "careers." These factors play important roles in
the decision-making process of Latour's main character,
Steil, a man who loves his country but can't refuse the
chance to emigrate to the US, especially if it means finding
out details about his long-lost father. Of course, from there
the plot quickly develops into the story of Steil's moral
decline in the US; his "toughening-up" into a hard case, his
life as a smalltime car thief and then a big time thorn in
the side of the crooked stepmother and the corrupt uncle/FBI
agent. All in all, a perceptive piece of crime writing told
against a criticism of Cuban and US societies. For what it's
worth, I think the book could have benefited from leaner
writing and less use of journal/diary entries, but that's
just me.
For those of you who want to learn more about Cuban detective
fiction, there is a very good article in the most recent
issue of Hopscotch Magazine (out of Duke). The article has
not yet been posted on the magazine's web site
(www.hopscotch.org), but might appear there in the near
future. Manuel Ramos www.manuelramos.com
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