Havana Bay

Havana Bay is a crime novel by Martin Cruz Smith, set in Cuba. It is the fourth novel to feature Investigator Arkady Renko and won the 1999 Hammett Prize. Renko is depressed because his wife Irina is dead, the victim of an incompetent nurse and doctor, who give her ampicillin, which she was allergic to, and didn't give her an adrenalin shot in time to save her life. He is called to Havana to identify the body of his old friend, Pribluda, now a co... more

Havana Bay is a crime novel by Martin Cruz Smith, set in Cuba. It is the fourth novel to feature Investigator Arkady Renko and won the 1999 Hammett Prize. Renko is depressed because his wife Irina is dead, the victim of an incompetent nurse and doctor, who give her ampicillin, which she was allergic to, and didn't give her an adrenalin shot in time to save her life. He is called to Havana to identify the body of his old friend, Pribluda, now a colonel in the SVR, staying on from the old KGB. In a decaying Cuba, filled with cars and houses that were built in the 1950s and are now falling to pieces, he stumbles on a plot to defraud Russia of $250 million in a shady sugar purchase scam, and solves a murder. The novel begins with Arkady at the end of Havana Bay as the sun begins to rise on what promises to be a hot day in Cuba. He was diverted here right from the airport. The Cuban militia has what they believe is a dead Russian and since Arkady is a Senior Investigator from Moscow and... less