Click on any book to visit its page

On May 9, 2003 ($24.95), Putnam published HAVANA RUN, the latest John Deal novel from acclaimed suspense writer Les Standiford. The San Francisco Chronicle says, “There’s no smoother nor more substantial crime novelist than Les Standiford.”  And Booklist adds, “John Deal is the most emotionally centered protagonist in contemporary crime fiction.” 

John Deal has spent much of his adult life trying to rebuild the Miami construction firm that his late father ruined. When the possibility of a major project in post-normalized Cuba arises, he can’t help but be intrigued. But Deal quickly learns that he’s been lured to Havana for another, far more dangerous purpose: to aid a freedom-fighting group within the island nation by springing an American prisoner from a Castro jail. Of course, Deal wants nothing to do with it—until he discovers who that prisoner is: a man closer to him than he could possibly have imagined. And that prisoner is also the holder of secrets—highly sensitive information that even Deal’s own government seems to think worth killing for.

 HAVANA RUN is not only an engrossing thriller full of passion and intrigue—it also provides an insider’s glimpse of an exotic nation seldom seen by Americans and a new look at an international political situation that has fueled endless debate and stymied U.S. foreign policy strategists for more than forty years.   

The author’s work has earned extraordinary accolades in the past:  “Calls to mind the fiction of Graham Greene,” (Philadelphia Inquirer); “Standiford makes it look easy and elegant; each scene unfolds like a little gasp of breath,” (New York Times Book Review); “Reminiscent of the best parts of ‘To Have and Have Not,’ and ‘Islands in the Stream.’” (Miami Herald).  HAVANA RUN is another in a line that shows why “Les Standiford is one of a handful of today’s best writers who can bond all the excitement of a page-turning thriller with quality writing any novelist can envy.”  (George Garrett, author of Death of the Fox and Henry Hoyns Professor of Literature at the University of Virginia.) 

For further information about HAVANA RUN and Les Standiford, please feel free to phone me at 212.366.2534 or e-mail me at mmillenky@penguinputnam.com.