Comrades in Miami (Havana World)

Sea, Sex, Subterfuge, and Sun

"Comrades" is probably too benign a word for any of the relationships that José Latour unpacks in his new novel about a Cuban spymaster trying to defect the smart way. Colonel Victoria Valiente is a plain Jane with an inhaler, a brilliant psychologist, the "most respected individual in the General Directorate of Intelligence," and the head of the Miami desk. She is, of course, a master of subterfuge at the helm of a complex web of fictions, but she also happens to be genuinely in love with her husband, Manuel Pardo, an IT whiz working for a large state-owned company. The couple, disillusioned with Castro’s revolution, electronically steal $2.7 million of the state’s money and decide to leave the Party behind. That proves to be the easy part.

Despite the international intrigue and slippery identities that move Latour’s plot along, Comrades in Miami has a charming, reportorial breeziness. The Colonel (being a genius and everything) runs circles around her colleagues in Intelligence, and all of Victoria and Pardo’s coups are punctuated with a playfully ludicrous sex scene. (Latour seems entirely uninterested in debunking any cliché about Latins being passionate lovers.) The couple come off like a Cuban Nick and Nora, minus the martinis, but that’s before they arrive in Miami and tangle with the intelligence agencies of more than one nation. Comrades in Miami is a literate, lovely pleasure, and it delivers its twists.

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