Fifty Grand

Review: Dan McCarthy

Monday, October 12, 2009

EVOKING Cuban crime novels like Jerome Charyn’s Paradise Man, Fifty Grand by Adrian McKinty takes us on a rampage through a corrupt Colorado town and the decadence of Cuban military rule as it flicks between America and the Caribbean island.

Adrian McKinty

Serpent’s Tail; €12.75

EVOKING Cuban crime novels like Jerome Charyn’s Paradise Man, Fifty Grand by Adrian McKinty takes us on a rampage through a corrupt Colorado town and the decadence of Cuban military rule as it flicks between America and the Caribbean island.

In the female lead role is Cuban cop Hernandez who gets out of Cuba on the pretext of an educational trip. But she is really trying to discover the background to her father’s death years earlier. She arrives in Mexico and pays human traffickers to smuggle her across the border. Hernandez makes it across in the company of a young Nicaraguan kid but only after horrendous violence is visited upon a gang which attempts to rob them.

She eventually takes a job as a cleaner in a Colorado ski resort. It unfolds that her father was the victim of a hit-and-run in the area and the people she now works for are some of the main suspects – along with the corrupt local cops.

McKinty’s novel departs from regular crime fiction by its introduction of real characters into the plot. Brad Pitt shows up at a party, Tom Cruise owns an imposing mansion on a hilltop, Raul Castro makes an appearance as an avuncular protector of the state.

McKinty seems to be taking aim here at people who have sentimentalised the Cuban revolution. When Hernandez busts a petty crook and robs his western cigarettes and tampons she does so because she needs to. And whose fault is that? Cuba’s because it won’t play capitalist ball or America’s for keeping the ball and imposing a trade blockade? Either way, the people on the ground end up without basic commodities. This is the point McKinty wants to hammer home.

The author grew up in Carrickfergus at the peak of the Troubles and it is hard to believe that some of the machinations of that conflict didn’t seep into his being. He has written a faultless thriller.

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, October 12, 2009