BOOK DESCRIPTION
Leonardo Padura’s gripping new mystery breaks with the traditions of the detective novel, tracing the provenance of a mystical statue through history, from the Crusades to modern-day Havana.
Mario Conde is facing down his sixtieth birthday. What does he have to show for his decades on the planet? A failing body, a slower mind, and a decrepit country, in which both the ideals and failures of the Cuban Revolution are being swept away in favour of a new and newly cosmopolitan worship of money.
Rescue comes in the form of a new case: an old Marxist turned flamboyant practitioner of Santería appears on the scene to engage Conde to track down a stolen statue of the Virgen de Regla—a black Madonna. This sets Conde on a quest that spans from the Crusades to present day Havana, by way of the Spanish Civil War. He must uncover the true provenance of the Madonna and solve the two murders triggered by the theft of the statue.
Translated by Anna Kushner
S E P T E M B E R 8 , 2 0 1 4 ,
FEAST OF OUR LADY OF CHARITY
The unhealthy stench of poverty and overcrowding rose up to meet them, stunning them with its aggressive impact. It smelled of lost hope and the currents of dark waters flowing through uncovered gullies, of oil fried over and over again, of the putrid bins surrounded by millions of buzzing flies, of makeshift pens where pigs rolled around in mud and shit. It was a painful mixture.
The night before, as he was drinking with Skinny Carlos, Conde had planned this trip to the city’s catacombs as if he were storming Berlin. This hazardous embassy seemed to be the only place he was likely to find the Raydel impostor and Bobby’s strange Virgin of Regla. He had no choice but to follow this lead.
Candito the Red had succeeded in finding the name of an Adventist located in the “settlements” of San Miguel del Padrón, and had been willing to accompany him. Rabbit had also wanted in on the adventure. They’d finalized their plans and agreed to meet at nine in the morning in front of Red’s tenement building, where Conde picked them up. Despite Yoyi’s offer, Conde had opted not to include him and his shiny Bel Air in their risky voyage to an unknown world.
When they’d all climbed into the beaten-up but still functional Studebaker that Conde’s neighbor secretly and occasionally hired out, driver and all, the voyagers headed southeast down the Calzada de San Miguel del Padrón. Shortly before reaching San Francisco de Paula—the village where Hemingway had purchased his Finca Vigía and lived for twenty years, from which Conde had once stolen some panties that had known Ava Gardner’s most intimate intimacies—they veered left to a neighborhood on the side of a hill, which had been given the none-too-imaginative name of Lookout Heights. From there, one had a panoramic view of Northeast Havana, including part of the bay and the neighborhood that was home to the Virgin of Regla. From a distance, suspended above all its turbulence, they saw a city that seemed peaceful, perhaps even inviting
Following directions they received from locals, they had driven through a maze of streets full of potholes, water pipes, people, and wandering dogs, until they reached the last navigable part and what had to be the limits of Western civilization. There, Conde, Candito, and Rabbit got out and took a dirt road toward the edges of the “settlements,” as its inhabitants insisted on calling it. The driver remained behind as guardian of his old Studebaker, which had provided him his livelihood and whose integrity he would stay to protect.
Barely three hundred feet from the once-paved street, the outsiders realized that they were entering another universe, as if they’d gone through a black hole and emerged in a dimension outside of time and space. They were approaching a territory that Conde called “the world of the invisible.” The alleyways, made of compacted dirt, grew narrower, windier, and more irregular in their shape, physically manifesting a state of instability and deprivation. On either side of the path, which featured ridges that made it impossible for any vehicle shy of a war tank to make its way through, rose dwellings that grew progressively derelict as Conde and his friends encountered what appeared to be the main drag of the “settlement.” Upon entering this shantytown, they saw some brick houses with concrete foundations, but soon enough the signs of privation and the sight of makeshift dwellings overtook all aspects of their surroundings. Improvised shelters erected using a few blocks and bricks, others made with rotting wood, still others with metal sheets in varying states of deterioration, and even some out of cardboard. They were covered in a wide range of materials, anything that could be tasked with protecting their inhabitants from the rain and sun: the tin and wooden roofs were shielded with waterproof paper, and the most precarious ones made use of tarpaulins or plastic bags, fixed in place with a rock or iron girder. The laws of urban planning, architecture, even gravity appeared to be unknown in that cluster of miserable dwellings, which resulted in a chaotic and suffocating sprawl.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Leonardo Padura was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1955. A novelist, journalist, and critic, he is the author of several novels, two volumes of short stories, and several nonfiction collections. His novels featuring the detective Mario Conde have been translated into many languages and have won literary prizes around the world. The Man Who Loved Dogs was a finalist for the Book of the Year Award in Spain. Padura lives in Havana.
PUB DATE: June 10, 2021
BINDING: PB UK Royal (234x156)
EXTENT: 416 pages
BIC CODE: FA/ FF MARKET:
Crime Fiction PRICE: £ 12.99
REPORT CODE : NP ISBN : 978-1-913394-578
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