Dancing to ''Almendra''

Jim Lewis

… I devoured it with absolute delight, and I’m looking forward to reading it again, and to reading anything Montero might come up with next. It’s tempting to think in categories — it’s tempting to me, anyway: so sue me — but a good novel denies them, nimbly and without visible effort. This novel is great fun to read, and a paradoxical thing to contemplate. When I was done, I wasn’t sure if it was an especially well-written genre story, or a literary book based upon an especially raffish plot. Perhaps there’s no difference between the two, after all.
— The New York Times

Joanne Omang

Without a wasted word, Montero weaves together the real and fictional -- George Raft, New York, the Mafia summit at Apalachin, gossamer beauty and blood-soaked brutality -- in a web that personifies Cuba of 1957. One can only hope Montero will move from this triumph to turn her skillful eye on some more recent encounters between the Latin and Yankee realities. We will all see much more clearly when she does.
— The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

Montero's compelling latest (following Captain of the Sleepers) is set in Mafia-dominated Cuba in 1957, before Castro took power but during his military campaign from the hillsides. It tells the story of young journalist Joaqu n Porrata, who's investigating the murder of mob boss Umberto "Albert" Anastasia, who really was murdered in 1957. Joaquin is warned at every turn to stay away from the story, but he persists, traveling to New York and back, drawing a beating for his trouble. His hard-bitten voice alternates in the narrative with that of Yolanda, his one-armed mulatta lover, who provides a more magical realist take on the surreal Havana of the '50s. Period figures like Meyer Lansky and George Raft play pivotal roles in nicely imagined sequences about a city where charm and corruption were indivisible. But it's in the death of Joaqu n's brother, Santiago, tortured and murdered by the dictator's enforcers, that the reality of the coming revolution is brought home, making it clear that much more than a gaudy city of casinos and nightclubs is at stake. Montero blends fact and fiction with narrative aplomb: as in Graham Greene, the drama of a nation disintegrating in crisis is made very personal. (Feb.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

It is 1957 in Havana, Cuba, and recent university graduate Joaquin has found a job as a journalist covering the local entertainment scene. Against his inclinations, he is sent to the local zoo to report on the gory death of a hippopotamus only to discover that that death was a tardy warning of the execution of New York Mafioso Umberto Anastasia. As Joaquin delves deeper into the mystery, he learns too much about the New York-Havana connection of Mafia and casinos. One of his contacts is Yolanda, a beautiful, one-armed former circus performer, with whom he falls in love. Joaquin's and Yolanda's stories are interwoven and sprinkled with actual figures like Meyer Lansky, George Raft, and Lucky Luciano, resulting in a vivid portrait of the last days of violent, corrupt, prerevolutionary Cuba. The Cuban-born Montero (Captain of the Sleepers), who now lives in Puerto Rico, has written a book that serves as both social commentary and a well-constructed mystery. Highly recommended.
—Mary Margaret Benson

Kirkus Reviews

Organized crime and disorganized personal relations are tightly intertwined in the prolific Cuban-born Puerto Rican author's latest (The Captain of the Sleepers, 2005, etc.). It begins most auspiciously, with a killer first sentence that links the death of a New York mobster with the ill-fated escape of a hippopotamus from the Havana zoo. Nothing that follows is nearly as entertaining, though Montero presents a lively bevy of mutually involved characters, notably 22-year-old newspaper reporter Joaqu'n Porrata, who has retreated from his family's numerous dysfunctions (philandering dad, unstable mom, sexually befuddled younger sister) to work for a local daily, where he's "allowed to interview only comedians and whores." Acting on a tip from an old pal, who works at the zoo, Joaqu'n connects dots that suggest crime boss Umberto Anastasia was whacked before he could receive a "message"-presumably sent by Havana-based crime lord Meyer Lansky and his boys, to discourage any rival gangs from muscling in on their casinos (it's the late-1950s, when crime still paid quite well). A parallel story, narrated by a one-armed circus performer (Yolanda, for whom Joaqu'n falls hard), unearths many more secrets, endangering Joaqu'n and his loved ones-and, alas, permits the narrative to wander all over the Western hemisphere, distracting the reader's focus as it sedulously fills in blanks. Montero has done her homework, and the novel is filled with bizarre characters (a gay choreographer afflicted with leprosy is by no means the most outre), rapid-fire action and enough blood and guts to satisfy a cage of hungry lions. There's simply too much of everything. Montero captures the reader's attention, but thestory flies apart before the reader can take hold of it.