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Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Killing Castro by Lee Duncan Killing Castro by Lee Duncan. Writing as Lee Duncan & Don Holliday. 7. WRITING AS LEE DUNCAN. FIDEL CASTRO ASSASSINATED � Monarch MS1, 1961. Photo cover. Good $150. Mr. Block successfully kept this book hidden for almost fifty years, and even die hard pseudonym sleuths (like me) were in the dark until he had it reprinted. As KILLING CASTRO by Lawrence Block � Hard Case Crime HCC-051, 2009.Cover by Sharif Tarabay. 8. WRITING AS DON HOLLIDAY. CIRCLE OF SINNERS � Bedside 1220, 1961. Collaboration with Hal Dresner. Signed by Hal Dresner, VG $50. Dresner was the first of several writers who used the pen name Don Holliday. BORDER LUST � Nightstand NB 1588, 1961. One month Hal Dresner was too ill to meet his quota, and his prolific friend Lawrence Block wrote BORDER LUST as Don Holliday. Review of Killing Castro by Lawrence Block. Killing Castro By Lawrence Block; Read by Henry Leyva 4 CDs – Approx. 4 Hours 45 Minutes [UNABRIDGED] Publisher: BBC Audiobooks America Published: January 2009 ISBN: 9780792759751 Themes: / Thriller / Cuba / Hitman / Mercenaries / History / Assassination / Crime / There were five of them, each prepared to kill, each with his own reasons for accepting what might well be a suicide mission. The pay? $20,000 apiece. The mission? Find a way into Cuba and kill Castro. Until the announcement on the Hard Case Crime website in 2008 most Block aficionados, like me, had no idea that novel that is Killing Castro existed. Us Blockheads knew that LB had written a ton of novels early in his career. Heck we’d even identified quite a few of them. But unless you’d owned a copy of Fidel Castro Assassinated: A Dramatic Tale of a Daring and Successful Plot to Kill Cuba’s Dictator , and had compared this obscure 1961 Monarch paperback with Block’s writing you’d never have known he’d written it. This is because it was originally attributed to an otherwise unknown author “Lee Duncan.” Had it been written by “Paul Kavanagh” (a known Block pseudonym), I’d have already found and read a copy years ago. Indeed, to my ears this certainly feels like a lost fourth Paul Kavanagh novel. Two of Paul Kavanagh’s three other novels are about shady operatives doing black-ops for cash too. If you want the original paperback, by the way, ABEbooks.com currently lists a copy at $150.00. That’s down from the $600 asking price just a few months back. Hard Case Crime offers the gorgeous covered paperback version for just $7. Me, I’ll stick with the BBC Audiobooks America version. One of the things I liked most about this audiobook, other than the brisk characterization and snappy plotting, was all the historical context Block put into the novel. This isn’t merely a thriller, or a crime story. Running just under 5 hours (204 pages in paperbook) there’s about half an hour of historical exposition between all the action. In those sections Block deftly details Fidel Castro’s personal biography, the history Batista’s rule of Cuba, Fidel’s leadership of the revolution and a thoughtful analysis of the revolution’s aftermath. As far as I can tell the history is entirely accurate. It sticks to the facts and makes a case both for and against Castro’s revolution without any special pleading. To my mind “Lee Duncan” could have probably got a job at the Cuba desk of the CIA, just based on the analysis within this novel. They really could have used him too as the book originally came out the same year as the CIA-backed Bay Of Pigs invasion. But I guess the covert world’s loss is our literary gain. This is the first time I’ve heard Henry Leyva as a narrator. He performs the American mercenaries with enough distinction to tell all five of them apart, and gives good voice to two Cuban rebels, one male, one female. As Leyva is fluent in both English and Spanish he brings a ton of authenticity to the Cuban accented anti-castristas. He really is a narrator to watch. I first heard him as an actor performing in an episode of J. Michael Straczynski’s excellent audio drama anthology series City Of Dreams . He’s also narrated the audiobook version of Cuba Libre by Elmore Leonard, so I’m gonna have to get my hands on that audiobook too. Killing Castro by Lee Duncan. Time To Murder and Create 1 (1976) Finalist 1978 Edgar Award for Best Paperback. A Stab in the Dark (1981) Finalist 1982 Shamus Award for Best Novel. Eight Million Ways To Die (1982) 1983 Shamus Award for Best Novel Finalist 1983 Edgar Award for Best Mystery. When the Sacred Ginmill Closes 2 (1986) Finalist 1987 Anthony Award for Best Mystery Finalist 1987 Macavity Award for Best Novel Finalist 1987 Shamus Award for Best Novel. Out on the Cutting Edge (1989) Finalist 1990 Shamus Award for Best Novel. A Ticket to the Boneyard (1990) Finalist 1991 Anthony Award for Best Mystery Finalist 1991 Shamus Award for Best Novel. A Dance at the Slaughterhouse (1991) 1992 Edgar Award for Best Mystery Finalist 1992 Shamus Award for Best Novel. The Devil Knows You’re Dead (1993) 1994 Shamus Award for Best Novel. A Long Line of Dead Men (1994) Finalist 1995 Edgar Award for Best Mystery Finalist 1995 Shamus Award for Best Novel. KILLING CASTRO by Lawrence Block. “Garrison’s eyes opened. He grinned. He was an American businessman on vacation, a real estate speculator who occasionally took a taxi to look at a piece of property. He stayed in a top hotel, ate at good restaurants, tipped a shade too heavily, drank a little too much, and didn’t speak a damned word of Spanish. Hardly an assassin, or a secret agent, or anything of the sort. They searched his room, of course, but this happened regularly in every Latin American country. It was a matter of form. Actually, it tended to reassure him, since they searched so clumsily that he knew they were not afraid of him. Otherwise, they would take pains to be more subtle. He stood up, naked and hard-muscled, and walked to his window. He’d been careful to get a room with a window facing on the square. The square was the Plaza of the Republica, a small park surrounding the Palace of Justice. Parades with Fidel at their head made their way up a broad avenue to the plaza. Then Fidel would speak, orating wildly and magnificently from the steps of the palace. From the window Garrison could see those steps. With the rifle properly mounted on the window ledge, he could place a bullet in Fidel’s open mouth….” Book Review: Reviewed by Jana L. Perskie (APR 30, 2009) From the moment Fidel Castro made the choice to wage war against the dictatorial government of Cuban President Fulgencio Batista and to begin the Cuban Revolution, his life was in constant jeopardy. There were the perils of guerrilla warfare in the Sierra Maestra mountains, post revolution dangers from those he deposed, civilian and military, Cuban and US, plantation owners and crime bosses, who so profited under Batista. Then there were the numerous CIA attempts to kill Castro with poison pills, toxic cigars and exploding mollusks. Rumor has it that the dictator once even volunteered to kill himself. He was joking, of course. For nearly half a century, the CIA, Cuban exiles, and heaven knows who else, have been trying to devise ways to assassinate el Presidente. However, Lawrence Block did not know this when he wrote Killing Castro . The book was originally published by Monarch in 1961 as “Fidel Castro Assassinated.” Block used the pseudonym Lee Duncan, a moniker adopted for this novel alone. Killing Castro is as much about the journeys, literal and figurative, of five men, as it is about an assassination. Five Americans are offered twenty thousand dollars apiece to kill Castro. That was really a lot of money back in 1961. The loot is to be collected after the fact. Every one of the five has different reasons for slipping into Cuba and risking his life to kill a man relatively unknown to them, except for the media, stories from Cuban exiles, and government statements. It is, after all, only 1961, two years into the revolution and shortly before the Cuban missile crisis. Each man’s journey, his motivations and outcome, are what is really exciting and unexpected here. All of these characters are changed by this deadly adventure. Then one wonders who or what entity is behind the operation? Impoverished Cuban refugees could hardly have scraped together one hundred thousand dollars. So, “who was financing the assassination? Tobacco and sugar planters? Oil refiners? Batista fascists hungry to regain power? Americans unwilling to tolerate a Communist nation ninety miles offshore?” Interspersed between the narrative are italicized chapters which provide a historical perspective on Castro and the reasons he became involved in the politics of revolution. The history of the man, his years as a student and young revolutionary, are absolutely fascinating – especially as the changes which occur in him are contrasted with those which take place in his prospective killers. However, there are occasions when the author, through the voice of the omniscient observer, makes certain points and allegations which are way too subjective for omniscience and border on editorializing. I think Block would have been more credible had he used one of his characters to express these personal political views. I really enjoyed Killing Castro , and although it is far from the author’s best work, it certainly makes for an entertaining read.

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