But the prefatory note is a meditation on the possibilities of "reality", and Conde continues writing his novel in his head. Conde and the city of Havana share star status, both lovingly portrayed, both fraying at the edges, both prone to depression, yet full of joy. The male characters are obsessed with women, but it doesn't go much deeper than the appreciation of anatomy.

But then he finds the man is someone he was at school with who has done not only much better than him work-wise, but married Conde's long-ago love Tamara.Padura's characters are the same age as him, approaching 40 in the 1990s, "a faceless, aimless, gutless generation. The rich characterizations and bittersweet remembrances of old times, 20 years ago, play as great a role in the book as the investigation. Corruption is the theme here, in a style that would be as corrupt in a capitalist system, but here has particular Cuban inflections.

His Havana series crime novels featuring the detective Mario Conde, published in English by Bitter Lemon Press, have been translated into many languages and have won literary prizes around the world.

Conde is sleeping it off when the phone rings loudly in his ear making the sound of a jackhammer sound like a lullaby. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. The Times 'Blending noirish police procedural with vivid images of life in contemporary Cuba, Padura has produced another gem in the third of his Havana Quartet (after Havana Black and Havana Red). The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Tamara, at first evasive and unable to name any possible enemies of her husband, suddenly finds an address book full of potential leads.