Murder in Havana

Margaret Truman

4/11/2008

Max Pauling has been living in New Mexico since he retired from the State Department a year earlier. He teaches flying lessons. Prior to the State Department he worked for the CIA and had been an overseas undercover agent. When Victor Gosling, another ex-CIA agent approaches him about taking on a private assignment.

Gosling's company is checking into rumors that a large American pharmaceutical company is using a German company to purchase Cuba's extremely promising cancer drug research. If that is true, Gosling's bosses want the American drug company discredited for using the German company as a front to circumvent the American embargo of Cuban products. Pauling agrees to take the job of finding the proof and flies to Havana via Columbia.

At the same time, a large American delegate of private citizens is also going to Havana. It is lead by Price McCullough, the man who owns the drug company alleged to be trying to buy into the Cuban market. They are there for building relations between the two countries, if possible. McCullough may have his own agenda, as well.

Pauling and McCullough never meet while both are in Havana. Their paths, cross, though. There is the German drug company that would be the public buyer of the Cuban cancer research. There is Castro's birthday celebration. A man pulls a gun there to shoot the Cuban leader but Pauling aborts the assassination attempt. Then there is the beautiful woman who happens to be an agent trying to pull Castro down.

Well what do you know - a Capital Crimes novel that doesn't take place inside the Beltway. There are enough side scenes there and Mackenzie Smith plays a small role so that the feel isn't lost. Instead, most of the action of Murder in Havana takes place in - well, Havana.

Margaret Truman keeps up the suspense as Pauling ends up trying to escape from Cuba while under suspicion of murder. I read a review (on Amazon) that she doesn't have a realistic feel for Havana - reference wrong, speech patterns incorrect, etc. Since I've never been (although my parents met there) I didn't have any problems with her depiction.

Although not set in Washington D.C., Murder in Havana pleases the reader like any Truman novel. Pauling is in over his head and only his own wits may be able to get him out. Castro has been in charge of Cuba for most of my life. As an American raised on horror stories of Castro's Cuba, I was satisfied every time Castro's political nose was tweaked in this novel. How true the political situation and unrest is I'll never know. That didn't impede my pleasure in the book.

You can find more about this book at .

The Series:

Murder in the White House
Murder on Capitol Hill
Murder in the Supreme Court
Murder in the Smithsonian
Murder on Embassy Row
Murder at the FBI
Murder in Georgetown
Murder in the CIA
Murder at the Kennedy Center
Murder at the National Cathedral
Murder at the Pentagon
Murder on the Potomac
Murder at the National Gallery
Murder in the House
Murder at the Watergate
Murder in the Library of Congress
Murder in Foggy Bottom
Murder in Havana
Murder at Ford's Theater
Murder at Union Station
Murder at the Washington Tribune
Murder at the Opera
Murder on K Street