I am having a hard time evaluating this book. This is my first Nelson DeMille novel and I have to say that I like his writing style. Very lively. The characters are interesting. The settings are places that either I have been to and liked (Key West) or places that intrigue me and I would like to visit (Cuba).
So why was I not wild about the book? The plot. The “affair” was arranged as a clandestine visit to Cuba to retrieve, among other things, $60M that had been stashed away during the 1959 revolution. Spoiler alert: they never get the cash. Worse, they never try to get the cash. The protagonist, Mac MacCormick, who was promised $3M to join the expedition, led by Cuban ex-pats, feels duped. I feel the same way. The great adventure never really gets off the ground.
The story is really one of arranging the expedition, biding their time in Havana, embarking on a romance with the female leader of the expedition, obtaining some papers and relics (Plan B after the money is abandoned), getting the two trunks of Plan B stuff to the boat that will extract them from Cuba, then shooting their way to international waters. Spoiler alert: their boat is sunk and the Plan B trunks are lost. Or are they?
At the end of the book Mac mulls the possibility that the two trunks were actually salvaged by the men in the helicopters who saved their bacon. Were they CIA? No one is quite sure.
So an aborted expedition, a failed extraction. Does Mac get the girl? Even that is indefinite. In short, a plot that doesn’t satisfy. No one wins in this story.
Some books that might otherwise be lacking are redeemed by the descriptions of the exotic locales in which they are set. Cuba is exotic, but Mac hates it. I started the book thinking that I would really like to visit Cuba, but this book pretty much killed that desire.
There was enough good about this book that I will read DeMille again. But there was enough bad about the book that I can’t recommend it.
5 out of 10.