In Paul E. Walsh’s 1958 novel Murder in Baracoa, one of the characters remarks that the average person “goes away from Cuba remembering nothing but the nightclubs of Havana.” Walsh seemed determined to remedy that by keeping his narrative well away from the capital, as his protagonist, magazine illustrator Michael Chapman, goes to the seaside town of Baracoa upon the murder of his friend via poisoning, which in classic fashion has been deemed an accident by disinterested authorities. Clearly there’s something fishy going on, and not a simple murder, but an intricate conspiracy of some sort. Chapman starts to dig. Maybe we should start labeling these “find-my-friend’s-killer” novels, since there are so many.
Anyway, Chapman discovers his friend had a mistress, a young campesina named Catalina. He suspects her, but when Catalina makes it clear she thinks it was the dead man’s wife who did the dirty deed things get a little confused. Maybe neither woman is a killer, but both are most assuredly hot, and male resistance is low, as always in these books. By continuing to poke his nose into the death (we never knew artists were so brave), Chapman gets into deep voodoo trouble. We’d call Murder in Baracoa a mystery, except there’s really only one person who could realistically be the plot’s mastermind. Maybe it’s less a mystery than a missed opportunity. Know what would have made it better? A trip to Havana.
