Havana Blue (Mario Conde Mystery 3) (Mario Conde Investigates)

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This may have been at least partly because of the translation, which was stilted in parts and contained some strange figures of speech. Each saucer-shaped blue bloom has a network of magenta coloured veins, which radiate out from the near-white centre. Spray the applicator nozzle on your pulse points, wrists, insides of the elbows, back of the knees, chest, the sides of the neck and behind the ears.

But then he finds the man is someone he was at school with who has done not only much better than him work-wise, but married Conde's long-ago love Tamara. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Situated along the Straits of Florida, the capital of Cuba has been through several identities: Spanish colonial settlement, mobster rule in the 1930s, glamour of the 1950s, Cuban revolution and, most recently, a cultural renaissance. Anti-hero, Lieutenant Mario Conde of the Havana Police Department, known as "the Count," is suffering from a terrible New Year's Eve hangover.For the curious, and as the publishing dates given are often wrong, it is as follows: (1) Pasado Perfecto (Havana Blue) (1991); (2) Vientos de Cuaresma (Havana Gold) (1994); (3) Mascaras (Havana Red) (1997); (4) Paisaje de otono (Havana Black) (1998); (5) Adios Hemingway (same) (2001); (6) La neblina de ayer (Havana Fever) (2005); (7) La Cola de la serpiente (2011). The books cuts back and forth between Conde's memories of high school and the present as he tries to figure out if the too-good-to-be-true Rafael Morin is really the upright comrade everyone says he is.

At age thirty-four, with two divorces behind him, he drinks too much rum and smokes two packs a day. The rich characterizations and bittersweet remembrances of the good old days, 20 years before, play as great a role in the book as the investigation of a missing man. Though it’s the middle of a weekend, he is asked to urgently investigate the mysterious disappearance of Rafael Morin, a high-level business manager in the Cuban nomenklatura.He was at high-school with the man but, more importantly, had lusted after Tamara, the girl who married Morin. Though mostly told in the third person, it's Mario's vacillation between attention to the case at hand and meditation on his disastrous personal life (and his attention to a small circle of old friends) that form the structure and the surface of the story. So take a seat at an authentic paladar (family-run restaurant) and enjoy the vibrant evolution of Havana. Conde is sleeping it off when the phone rings loudly in his ear making the sound of a jackhammer sound like a lullaby.