Long description
Havana, New Year's Eve 1957, a terrorist bomb rips through the Tropicana nightclub. King Bongo, a rogue Cuban-American, tortured by a mysterious past and possessed of a mythic musical talent, goes on the hunt for the culprits, and for his sister, Cuba's most exotic showgirl, who disappeared in the explosion.
Navigating Havana's maze of Colonial backstreets, red-light districts, swank country clubs, and opulent casinos, Bongo encounters an outrageous cast of characters--American hit men, decadent movie stars, prophetic shoeshine boys, and a beautiful American socialite. At the center of the mystery is a sinister secret police operative with whom Bongo is destined to have a lethal showdown.
Review
Unflinching realism . . . a passport into Cuba's many layers, comfortable with the sun-kissed and the damned. --The Miami Herald
Big-picture, epic story-telling...full of believable myth. Sanchez has taken the entire historical and cross-cultural immensity of [Havana] and telescoped it into an intricately twisted mystery. --San Francisco Chronicle.
An exotic portrait of sex, violence, corruption and conspiracy in Cuba. --Washington Post
As propulsive as the Gulf Stream. King Bongo uses the conventions of the thriller, mixed with a little magical realism and a lot of parody, to approach serious issues from a different angle. --Los Angeles Times
It's fast. It's a thriller. It's sexy and violent. . . . The narration is as propulsive as the Gulf Stream. --The Los Angeles Times
An exotic portrait of sex, violence, corruption and conspiracy. --The Washington Post
Big-picture, epic story-telling. . . . Sanchez has taken the entire historical and cross-cultural immensity of his [Havana] and telescoped it into an intricately twisted mystery. --San Francisco Chronicle
[King Bongo] swims with revolutionaries and corrupt police, American gangsters and debauched Hollywood movie stars, Cuban showgirls and rich American tourists. Its colors are lurid, its tropes ambitious, its narrative piled high with upholstered imagery...Sanchez presents this rich gumbo with an assured showmanship. - South Florida Sun Sentinel
Imagine that the styles of Raymond Chandler and Graham Greene eloped and ran off to Havana in 1957-Sanchez's King Bongo is their love child. . . . A beautiful book. - The San Francisco Examiner
Gripping . . . Sanchez is amarvelous writer. He creates startling images of worlds unknown to the average reader. Then he propels his stories at high speed. Once you are launched into King Bongo, you must keep reading to find out what happens. - Houston Chronicle
Seduction and betrayal...a classic noir style that dances to a '50s beat...rich pop culture details and political reverberations...[Sanchez's] Havana is a lavish and menacing dreamscape. - St. Petersburg Times
Sanchez has exhumed a lost moment in time--the last days of a Caribbean Pompei. -- The Oregonian
Colorful, vibrant and pulsing with life.... Havana in the '50s...[the] territory of alcohol-drenched tropical noir tales of Graham Greene, Malcolm Lowry and W. Somerset Maugham, gets a strong jolt of Cuban coffee and good old American rock'n'roll... Sanchez manages to evoke a rich, vibrant Havana with its magical dreaminess fully intact. - The News-Press (Florida)
The writing of Thomas Sanchez is a lush display of the pain of truth and the power of integrity. King Bongo is a lyrical masterpiece of such potency that no glass bottle of 'genre' could ever contain its impact. Not to read this book is to suffer a self-inflicted wound of irreplaceable loss. --Andrew Vachss
Begins . . . with a real bang. [Sanchez] knows how to ignite a story and keep it burning. - Detroit Free Press
Intricately-plotted . . . full of surprises and vivid, often bizarre characters. There are echoes here of Dashiel Hammett and Graham Greene, but the music is Sanchez's own, and a captivating music it is, moving with the swift, syncopated rhythms of an Afro-Cuban dance. --Phil Caputo
Sanchez ably constructs a layered mystery. . .. [He] most successfully and sensitively evokes Havana when he probes the racial dynamics of pre-revolution Cuba. - The Miami Herald
Nasty cool. A terrific read-swift and grotesque, bursting with dark magic, humor and design. --Joy Williams
On the brink of revolution [Havana] proves as sinister a crossroads as any...each twist and turn introduces a new set of characters more outrageous than the last. -- San Antonio Express
Powerful...spectacular...amazing. -Howard Norman
A surrealistic fairy tale of Havana, filled with strange and diverse characters. Sanchez's novel can be read as a contemporary Shakespearean tragedy, and provides insight into a place and a time that is forever lost. -- Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Sanchez's sleuth follows in the noble line of detectives in Dashiell Hammett's and Raymond Chandler's fiction. [King Bongo is] savvy and unsentimental, but he's vulnerable and highly emotional, a real latin lover. -- The Press Democrat (Santa Rosa, CA)