Havana, by Stephen Hunter

Earl Swagger, the W.W.II hero turned Arkansas cop, is back for another Hunter adventure.  The time is 1953 and Earl is detailed to accompany and provide protection for Arkansas congressman Harry Etheridge on a fact-finding trip to Havana.  Congressman Etheridge’s ‘fact-finding’ primarily involves Havana’s bars and brothels and when Earl rescues the congressman from a dangerous situation he has gotten into, he comes to the attention of the Havana office of the CIA.  The CIA has been watching a rising young Cuban named Castro and the local agent, with a nudge from the American mob with Cuban investments to protect, has decided that he needs to be eliminated.  Since Earl is a talented marksman and hunter, he is enlisted to be Castro’s assassin.  Castro, though, is not without his own protection in the form of a wily and very likable Russian agent named Speshnev, who has been watching over and educating the young Cuban.  Has Earl finally met his match?  You’ll have a great time finding out in this terrific suspense novel that transports you back to the freewheeling Havana of the 50s.  And, yes, Hemingway makes a cameo.
 

Avenger, by Frederick Forsyth

Mr. Forsyth doesn’t write that many novels so a new one is always welcome.  In May of 1995, Ricky Colenso decides to volunteer as an aid worker in Bosnia before he goes off to college in the fall.   War is raging in Bosnia and in the turmoil and confusion, Ricky vanishes after only a few weeks.  A search is launched but Ricky is never found.  Normally, that would be that but Ricky is the grandson of a billionaire Canadian, Stephen Edmond, who’s not satisfied with the search.  He hires a professional tracker who is able to learn that Ricky was brutally robbed and murdered but not the identity of the killers or the location of Ricky’s body.  Fastforward to 2001. One of the participants in Ricky’s murder is dying of cancer and he gives the tracker the name of Ricky’s killer, a ruthless Serbian crime warlord who made millions during the war and then left and built an impregnable fortress in South America.   Stephen doesn’t want his grandson’s murderer killed; he wants him brought to the United States to stand trial.  For that task he hires the Avenger—who must not only single-handedly abduct the crime warlord from his well-guarded lair but also somehow get him back to America.  Forsyth does a masterly job of introducing the main characters through flashbacks and builds the action to a suspenseful and clever climax.  Nicely done.
 

Our Lady of the Forest, by David Guterson

The author of the wonderful Snow Falling on Cedars returns with a new novel set in the Pacific Northwest.   This time we are in the small logging community of North Fork, Washington.  The logging industry has fallen on hard times and North Fork is a struggling town.  One of the strugglers is Ann Holmes, a teenage runaway from a horrific home life. She has ended up in North Fork, lives in a campground, and to make ends meet picks mushrooms in North Fork’s forests.  On one of her mushroom picking excursions she purportedly receives a visitation by the Virgin Mary, who promises to appear to Ann several more times, and according to Ann does. The Virgin Mary is generally not happy with things and specifically wants a church built in the forest.  Word of Ann’s sightings spreads and suddenly she is an overnight sensation and the town’s a tourist stop.  Caught in the brouhaha is Father Collins, the town’s young Catholic priest, who must evaluate Ann’s sightings while questioning his calling as a priest.  Also swept up is Tom Cross, a cross ex-logger coping with deep debt, the breakup of his marriage, and guilt over an accident that has left his son a quadriplegic.  Tom would welcome a miracle at this point.  Completing the triptych is Carolyn Greer, a fellow mushroom picker and acquaintance of Ann’s, who spots an opportunity for some big money to be made.   I’m not sure what to make of this novel.  I admire the author a great deal and his latest is well-written but I enjoyed his two previous novels more than this one; perhaps it was the subject matter or the lack of likable characters.  Still, I find the story lingering in my thoughts and a year from now if confronted I’ll remember what the story was about without having to read the dust jacket to refresh my memory—which isn’t always the case!
 

Hello, Darkness, by Sandra Brown

Paris Gibson is a late night disc jockey for an Austin, Texas radio station.  She plays love songs and during her show she takes listener calls and occasionally dispenses romance advice.  She is in the middle of one of her shows when she receives a call from a man calling himself Valentino.  He tells Paris that he has abducted a girl who has rejected him on Paris’s advice and he plans to kill her in 72 hours.   Paris contacts the police and who should show up but Dean Malloy, a police psychologist and a friend of Paris’s from a past complicated love triangle.  Paris and Dean determine that the abducted girl is Janey Kemp, 17, the druggie daughter of a local judge and a founding member of a teenage sex club.  As Paris and Dean try to locate Janey, they discover that Dean’s son Gavin was with Janey the night she disappeared and he becomes one of the prime suspects, along with a couple of employees at Paris’s radio station.  Can Paris and Dean find Janey before the 72 hours run out—and maybe sort out their feelings for each other once and for all?  This was another winner from Brown; I liked the storyline and the interesting characters.
 
 

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