Havana Red

This is the first of the Havana quartet featuring Lieutenant Mario Conde, a tropical Marlowe. A body is found in a Havana park. A young transvestite dressed in a beautiful red evening dress, strangled. The victim had fled his family, finding refuge with Marques, an author living alone surrounded only by books, his house in ruins. In the baking heat of the Havana summer Conde investigates, moving through a Cuban reality where nothing is what it seems. Padura's masterful prose and eye for detail evoke the Havana that millions of tourists have come to know: crumbling architecture, peeling paintwork and a pulsating, searing sensuality beneath the tropical sun.

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"A scorching crime novel from a star of Cuban fiction...syncopated with brilliant riffs on sex, society, religion, even food." Independent"Prize-winning crime noir by Cuba's celebrated writer." Daily Mail"Padura's powerful writing creates an atmospheric picture of a turbulent city, illuminated by Conde's sardonic commentary." Sunday Telegraph"Conde is thrown into a tangled web of mysticism, politics and subversive activity. Captured perfectly in Padura's seamy, heat-soaked pages." Guardian

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Leonardo Padura was born in 1955 in Havana and lives in Cuba. He has published a number of short story collections and literary essays but international fame came with the Havana Quartet, all featuring Inspector Mario Conde.Like many others of his generation, Padura had faced the question of leaving, particularly in the late 80s and early 90s, when living conditions deteriorated sharply as Russian aid evaporated. He chose to stay. And to write beautiful ironic novels in which Soviet style socialism is condemned by implication through scenes of Havana life where even the police is savagely policed.The crime novels feed on the noises and smells of Havana, on the ability of its inhabitants to keep joking, to make love and music, to drink rum, and to survive through petty crime such as running clandestine bars and restaurants.

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