Fiction

cuba libre

Elmore Leonard

Viking, #16.99

IT's all about hats. Elmore Leonard first earned recognition through writing westerns - Hombre, Valdez is Coming, and others. His books switched to more contemporary settings and were dubbed thrillers. But Leonard has always written White Hat v Black Hat stories. His most authentic western was City Primeval, set in the Denver of the seventies.

The White Hat is usually scuffed. Leonard's heroes can be con men, escaped convicts, or bank robbers. Sometimes they are all three.

But they ride tall in the saddle and do what a man has to do.

The dark forces of the Black Hats are never fully explained. If good is never purely white and unsullied - indelibly marked by human frailty - evil seems to spring unbeckoned from the recesses of unfortunate souls. These dark areas can never be fully explored.

Leonard's work is stamped with the conviction that the good guy always wins. He may not achieve what he wants. He may find it hard work. But his White Hat is raised in partial triumph as the hero rides into the sunset, usually with a feisty pioneering woman at his side.

In Cuba Libre the White Hat wears a panama and the scene is the 1898 war between Spain and the US. It is the nearest Leonard has come to a historical novel.

The impeccable research, Elmore's reliable sidekick as he rides into battle, provides a convincing setting.

An explosion on the US Maine is the catalyst for a resume of Cuban insurrection and an indictment of Spanish rule.

Ben Tyler, bank robber and apprentice gun-runner, rides into town. He is one mean hombre but his redemptive qualities prove his salvation. Tyler is an honest bank robber. In contrast, his potential nemesis and wearer of the Black Hat is a criminal lawman.

The conflict between this ambiguous good and irrefutable evil flows like a swirling current through a landscape of revolution, romance, and ransom. The plot twists and turns, rages through banks, prisons, and revolutionary hideouts.

This sweeping style is held together by Leonard's laconic dialogue and his ability to switch scenes seamlessly to weave a story which gently grips, leaving little bruising from the plot.

For Leonard, like Chandler, uses the plot merely as a vehicle to carry the character into situations which show their frailty or strength. This vehicle may be well-oiled and slick but it is the wiles and waywardness of human beings that provide the driving force.

For his next trick, Leonard will resurrect Chilli Palmer, hero of Get Shorty. Many will see this as Leonard returning to the present. In truth, Leonard's plays on morality are timeless.

Cuba Libre is an intoxicating tale of the evil that men do and the power of a White Hat when a ray of goodness is reflected from his brim on his day in the sun. The setting may be unfamiliar but Cuba Libre is authentic Leonard. That is praise enough.