Cuba Libre by Elmore Leonard

Crime caper in the Spanish-American War

Elmore Leonard got his start writing Westerns back in the 1950s and eventually became one of America’s bestselling authors in the genre of crime fiction. His 1998 book Cuba Libre, a historical novel set during the Spanish-American War, is somewhat of an intersection between these two genres. Though technically not a Western, it does often read like a horse opera that just happens to be set in the Caribbean.

The story opens in 1898, right after the USS Maine has been sunk in Havana Harbor but shortly before the United States has declared war on Spain. Ben Tyler, a cowboy by trade, gets out of Yuma Territorial Prison, where he has been incarcerated for bank robbery. He meets up with his old friend and former ranch boss Charlie Burke, who recruits Tyler into a scheme to ship horses from Galveston to Cuba. The horses are just a cover, however, for a smuggled shipment of guns to be sold to the Cuban revolutionaries fighting for independence from Spain. When Tyler and Burke arrive in Cuba, however, they are double-crossed by their contacts in Cuba and harassed by Cuban law enforcement. This puts Tyler and Burke in a difficult position from which they must escape if they hope to obtain their hard-earned profit and take revenge on their antagonists.

I’m a fan of Leonard’s writing in general, but this is not his best work. Transplanting his usual crime caper fare to this historical setting should have worked out fine, but here in some cases the history gets in the way of the crime fiction and vice versa. Just when the heist plot seems to be gaining momentum, the reader gets diverted into a historical aside. I don’t think it’s necessary that the reader know the barrel width of every gun on every battleship, nor the failures of every general participating in the war. I prefer Leonard’s earlier Westerns, which would sometimes incorporate historical information—such as the Civil War in Last Stand at Sabrer River—but in a less obtrusive way. The plot of Cuba Libre is a bit low on thrills. There’s a comic undertone that nullifies much of the danger that would realistically occur in this scenario. The most exciting scene in the book happens towards the front, and the conclusion of the novel is less than climactic.

The characters are also not particularly interesting. They are rather thinly drawn and somewhat generic. If this book were made into a movie like most of Leonard’s novels, some quirky or charismatic actors could bring some interesting life to these characters, but on the page they come across as pretty bland. It’s also disappointing that only a few of the supporting characters are Cubans or Spaniards. All of the leads—the hero, the best friend, the leading lady, the villain—are white Americans. You learn more about the sugar industry and the American military’s part in the Spanish-American War than you do about Cuban culture or the revolution.

What Leonard is consistently good at is writing clever and lively dialogue and creating crime schemes that pit multiple parties against one another in configurations that keep the reader guessing as to the outcome. Both of those qualities are evident in Cuba Libre, but to a lesser extent than I recall from other books of his that I’ve read. The plot here feels safer and more predictable than the gritty realism of many of his Westerns or even the less serious contemporary adventures of his Raylan Givens novels. It’s still Elmore Leonard, though, and although Cuba Libre is unlikely to show up on any top ten list of his works, it’s still better than 90 percent of the crime fiction that’s out there.