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| HCC Edition, 2009 |
The story centers around five American men who are
hired to kill Fidel Castro. The plan is
to split the men up to take multiple attempts on Castro’s life. The novel opens in Ybor City, Florida—Tampa’s
Latin district—where the men are brought together for a briefing; each is
promised $20,000 if Fidel Castro is killed.
The novel spends time in the perspective of each of
the men, including back stories, and motivating factors. The men range from outright criminals to
anti-Castro zealots to adventure seekers.
The story is told in a nonlinear fashion, and there is much less action
than expected. Instead it builds more as
a character piece (in a very genre manner), focusing on each of the assassins
and their reasons for taking the job.
One is a dying bank clerk, another is running from the law, and another
is avenging the murder of his brother.
The novel is divided into 11 chapters, and every
other one is devoted to Castro’s rise to power.
The segments documenting Castro’s political ascendency are seemingly accurate,
and Mr Block takes some effort to explain the psychology of political dissidence,
revolution and power. The novel has an
atmosphere of weariness. A weariness of
this is how the world has always worked, and this is how it always will
work. Castro could be exchanged for a
thousand different tyrants and nothing would change.
Killing
Castro is a dark story, but it doesn’t fit very well into a
specific category. The opening line of
the novel is both misleading, and indicative, of the novel:
“The taxi, one headlight out and one fender crimped, cut through downtown Tampa and headed into Ybor City.”
It is a precursor for the atmosphere and tone of the novel, but it is misleading because it sets the stage for a very straight forward 1960s suspense novel, which it isn’t, exactly. What it is, is a very good, and very entertaining story, with just enough action and suspense to keep it interesting, and a bevy of detail about Cuba in the middle Twentieth Century.
Killing Castro was published in 1961 with the title Fidel Castro Assassinated as by Lee Duncan. A nom de plume Mr Block used only once.
1 comment:
I had the same reaction while I was reading it. I enjoyed it and was really impressed by parts of it but I kept wondering..now exactly what kind of novel IS this? Whatever, Block did a hell of a good job.
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