Killing Castro - Lawrence Block [60]
Ah well. Last I looked, Fidel and Liz were both still alive. Charlie, on the other hand, died a while back.
It was a challenge, writing the book. I didn’t know a whole lot about Cuba, and I was limited to what I could find out at the library because a fifteen hundred dollar advance wasn’t going to send me to Havana to do on-the-ground research. And Heckelmann wanted the book in a hell of a hurry. God knows what he’d heard …
I wrote it quickly enough, and I happen to know that I finished it on March 29, 1961. How do I remember? Well, if I’d forgotten, the dedication would remind me:
This is for AMY JO, who was born yesterday
If I didn’t learn all that much about Cuba, I did learn a little about writing—specifically, about writing action scenes, something with which I’d had little experience. And I guess the book came off OK. Here’s what a very generous Amazon.com reviewer had to say when Hard Case Crime published the book:
Hard Case Crime has done it again, bringing us a 1961 pseudonymous thriller from Lawrence Block. Killing Castro focuses on one member of a ragtag ensemble cast who have accepted a commission to kill Fidel Castro. They begin in Tampa, make their separate ways to Havana and … well … don’t think that later history guarantees that Fidel will make it through the final reel.
The narrative is taut, the language pulpy, the plotting perfect. Drenched in booze, cigarette and cigar smoke, beans and rice and sex, the story moves to its satisfying conclusion. Along the way there are interspersed accounts of Fidel’s rise to and abuse of power. And give Block special points for his knowledge of Cuba in general, Havana in particular.
The book underscores Block’s persistent and longstanding talent for this sort of writing. He does it now and he could do it then. And, no, hit man Turner in this book is not the prototype for Block’s current hit man, John Keller. He’s his own man and he’s got some dangerous partners. Fidel, watch your back. (Richard B. Schwartz, “Old Reliable,” review of Killing Castro, by Lawrence Block, Amazon.com, February 10, 2009)
I got another very generous review around the same time from an old friend of mine, long active in leftist circles. “You had the right slant on Cuba all along,” she wrote. I did? Well, even a blind sow finds an acorn once in a while.
I’ve written a whole lot of books under a whole lot of names, and there are readers out there who’ve devoted a lot of time and energy into rooting out this pseudonymous work of mine. I’ve been credited—if that’s the word—with a good many books I had no connection with, but I can think of only two books that no one knew were mine.
Fidel Castro Assassinated was one of them. The pen name—Henry Morrison’s selection—was Lee Duncan. Heckelmann may or may not have thought that was the author’s real name, but it was the only name he had, and he slapped it on the book and that was that.
Charles Ardai of Hard Case Crime came up with the new title, Killing Castro, and I think it’s a great improvement. And now, as this fifty-year-old tale bounces around cyberspace as an ebook, I can only sit back and wish it well. And hope you enjoyed it.
—Lawrence Block
Greenwich Village
Lawrence Block (lawbloc@gmail.com) welcomes your email responses; he reads them all, and replies when he can.
A BIOGRAPHY OF LAWRENCE BLOCK
Lawrence Block (b. 1938) is the recipient of a Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America and an internationally renowned bestselling author. His prolific career spans over one hundred books, including four bestselling series as well as dozens of short stories, articles, and books on writing. He has won four Edgar and Shamus Awards, two Falcon Awards from the Maltese Falcon Society of Japan, the Nero and Philip Marlowe Awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, and the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers Association