Rating: 
Summary: I kept looking for the 'good parts' .....
Review: ... if you're reading HAVANA, and looking for the good parts, be prepared to be as disappointed as I was. It's not that Stephen Hunter can't create appealing characters; the 'Russian Spy', Speshnev, is as charming as the title character in "The Jewel Of The Nile". And of course, Earl is admired by all of Mr. Hunter's fans. Unfortunately, in this offering Mr. Hunter works so hard to show Earl as a more complex personality that he (Earl) doesn't seem to coelesce as a defined person. I found myself wishing he would just take the damned drink and bugger off. And take that boringly idiotic Castro with him. This work might be considered the second book of a trinary work, defining the period between "Hot Springs" and "Black Light". For those of us who just can't stand NOT to have read everything that Stephen Hunter writes, it's a must-have. You may decide that doesn't mean you have to actually READ it. I bought this at an airport bookstall, and read it all the way from Oregon to Las Vegas, and halfway back. I must admit it was the motivation for a first-time experience: never before have I been able to fall asleep on an airplane.
Rating: 
Summary: Third Earl Swagger Novel is okay, but Not the Best of them
Review: After "Hot Springs" and especially after "Pale Horse Coming" I couldn't wait to get a look at the latest of the Earl Swagger novels, "Havana." Unfortunately though, Hunter just didn't deliver in this third installment. In the back of the book, Stephen Hunter acknowledges that A) he was struggling to write this next novel and B) the idea to send Earl to Havana was not his idea. Personally, I believe this shows through in places. At times it almost seemed that Earl didn't fit in with the plot, was kind of made to fit even. Yes, the gunfights and such persist. We even see Earl in the role of "sniper" (see Hunter's incredible book "Point of Impact" for a great sniper novel) but it's not enough to win over a tried and true Stephen Hunter fan. Hunter has done better. The good points though are the return of Frenchy Short, a great character from the first Earl novel, "Hot Springs." The setting for pre-Castro Cuba and the interesting historical twist of including Fidel as a key character are also well done. Unfortunately, Hunter seems to get too caught up with these other characters and misses the fact that it's our hero Earl that we've come to hear about.
Rating: 
Summary: First-grade level reading
Review: And the first-graders would say it belonged in the kindergarten class.
Rating: 
Summary: havana
Review: By far the best of the Earl Swagger novels. The character grows from one book to the next. The inconsistancies from the Bobby Lee books, acknowledged by the author, are forgiven as the reader wants to know Earl better with each book. Mr. Hunter would be further forgiven if he would use his authors license to find a way to write about Bobby Lee and Earl as adults in the same book.
Russell Stern
Rating:
Summary: Earl Swagger is Back, Better than Ever
Review: Cuba in 1953 is wide open, appealing to rich Americans who want to revel in wine, women and gambling. The Mob, the CIA and Big Sugar want it to stay that way. Castro and the Soviets want change. Earl Swagger has been brought to the country under false pretenses. He thinks he's there to bodyguard a congressman, but the CIA puts him on the hunt for Castro's head. The Russians however have their own version of Swagger, a guy fresh out of a Siberian gulag named Speshnev who've they've sent to nurture, train and protect Fidel and the relationship that develops between the two old soldiers, Swagger and Speshnev is the best part of the story. Assassins, spies, slovenly soldiers, an evil torturer, Meyer Lansky, Ernest Hemingway, and a crazy, stupid mob killer are just a sampling of the characters that people the pages of HAVANA, which is a five star thriller, espionage novel that you won't be able to put down. Reviewed by Vesta Irene
Rating:
Summary: Please, let Earl rest in peace.
Review: Earl Swagger is dead. His death is described in one of Hunter's earlier, and much, much better books. Please, Stephen, let the poor guy rest with dignity. I am a big fan of Stephen Hunter's previous books. This one is definitely the worst in his impressive run, starting with "Dirty White Boys." The author really needs to find some fresh characters and stories, and not continue to rehash the same old. The book flowed well, but the main character seemed very uncomfortable in his own skin. Definitely not the Earl Swagger of the previous books, but a twisted carricature of himself, constantly wondering what the hell he was doing in that novel. Uncharacteristically of Hunter, the supporting characters are quite weak and undeveloped. Castro himself is portrayed as a babbling megalomaniac idiot, which, whatever you may think of him, is certainly not the case. Overall, the book was a dissapointment.
Rating:
Summary: Gambling is Expensive, Sex is Cheap, Death is Free
Review: Earl Swagger is on special assignment from the Arkansas state patrol, serving as a bodyguard to Congressman Harry Etheridge, called Boss Harry among his constituents, on the legislator's tour of 1953 Cuba. However, unknown to Earl, the real reason he was asked to guard Boss Harry is because certain elements of the U.S. Government want him to take out Castro, because the fiery young upstart's speeches are inciting the populace and the United Fruit Company, Domino Sugar and American mobsters like things just the way they are, as they're all making mucho moola hand over fist. But the Soviets are just as eager to protect Castro as the Americans are to eliminate him and Earl gets caught in the middle, suffering betrayal after betrayal until he finally takes matters into his own hands, Swagger style. HAVANA'S cast includes a few real-life characters such as Mafioso Meyer Lansky and a loutish Ernest Hemingway and an assortment of unforgettable fictional characters, such as the man from the gulag, the ironic Speshnev, sent to protect Castro. Then there's the Cuban scalpel wielding torturer, who proves to be Swagger's ultimate adversary. I have to say in 1953 Cuba where "gambling is expensive, sex is cheap, and death is free," that there was apparently an awful lot of violence going on and much of it is delivered by Earl Swagger in this book. Review by Stephanie Sane
Rating: 
Summary: "Everybody hated Castro, except of course the people."
Review: Havana, 1953, all tawdry glamour and heady excitement, lures opportunists of all types with its irresistible promises of financial and political gain. Author Hunter wastes not a moment in drawing the reader into the complexity of Cuban life as he reveals the chances ambitious men, many of them Americans, are willing to take in the economic and political free-for-all which has accompanied Fulgencio Batista's seizure of the presidency in a recent coup. American interests, including the interests of American mob boss Meyer Lansky, Batista's friend of more than thirty years, are being served by Batista's dictatorship. Hunter recreates the tension-filled jockeying for power and the no-holds-barred violence which accompany it by presenting a large cast of characters representing the various elements contending with each other for dominance in Havana. Earl Swagger, a former State Policeman from Arkansas and a Medal of Honor winner, has been hired to be bodyguard for the venal Congressman Harry Etheridge, who believes that the American gangsters in Cuba are trying to muscle in on contracts for all the services at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay. Mob boss Meyer Lansky is now thoroughly entrenched in Havana, colluding with American corporations which need cheap sugar, labor, and fruit. The Soviets have assigned a parolee from Siberia to "handle" Fidel Castro, whom they are trying to educate and groom for higher office. American Central Intelligence has set up shop in Havana, though various station officers have formed "off-campus" alliances which will leave them independently wealthy. The U.S. Navy, the Cuban secret police, especially a torturer who specializes in slitting eyeballs, and even Ernest Hemingway are involved in the action. Concentrating almost exclusively on his plots, rather than his characters, most of whom are stereotypes, Hunter does a terrific job of juggling, keeping all the balls in the air. The pace never flags, the action is non-stop, and because it takes place on a small island, the reader expects the characters to interact normally and their lives to overlap. What would appear to be improbable or coincidental in a wider context appears normal within the limited boundaries of Cuba, and the six or seven subplots develop a fairly full picture of life on the island which feels realistic. The gruesome torture scenes, and the concluding scenes with Swagger, in which he feels the need for a final sort of vengeance, seem geared more to film than fiction, though these are minor quibbles for a book which moves swiftly and smoothly from one crisis to the next as the reader, totally involved in the intricacies of Cuban political and social history, remains fully engaged in an exciting novel which is great fun to read. Mary Whipple
Rating:
Summary: The law of diminishing returns
Review: Hunter squeezed another Earl story out of the limited timeline he'd constructed for himself, and this one feels contrived. There is still a good amount of enjoyable stuff. The set piece where Earl senses danger and avoids a trap has the excitement of the better efforts in the series. Some of the minor characters are well-drawn too, such as Roger the ineffectual pretty-boy Harvard man.
But I've had enough of the technical gun business, and another annoying aspect for me was the sloppiness in little things. Frankie talks one way when he's first introduced and then another later on. Another minor character starts as a Yale man, then later he's Harvard. And there was an awful lot of misspelling that the editors could/should have caught.
I ripped through it on a plane and then left it behind.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I am a huge Stephen Hunter fan but 'Havana' was a big disappointment. It should have been called 'A Book-Too-Far'.
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