Ahira's Hangar

Dan Simmons is a man for all seasons. He has written hard boiled detective novels, horror novels, science fiction novels, a plethora of short stories, an investigative thriller (Darwin's Blade), a wonderful general novel in Phases of Gravity -- and a spy novel.

The year is 1942, and a writer known as Ernest Hemingway has formed an amateur spy ring which operates out of his house on the island of Cuba!

Quote:At the height of World War Two, the famous writer Ernest Hemmingway sought permission from the U.S. government to operate a spy ring out of his house in the Cuban countryside. This much is true...

It is the summer of '42, and FBI agent Joe Lucas has come to Cuba at the behest of J. Edgar Hoover to keep an eye on Hemingway. The great writer has assembled a ragtag spy ring that he calls the "Crook Factory" to play a dangerous game of amateur espionage. But then Lucas and Hemingway, against all odds, uncover a critical piece of intelligence - and the game turns deadly. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
<i></i>

I didn't expect to like either this book, or Hemingway, as much as I did by the end of this book. I read it only because I love Simmons and not this genre. But I rank this up as one of the top books in my list of "boy this book surprised me by how much I liked it and how much it stuck with me for years later".

I was not sure what to expect out of this book when I first read it, either. But I did end up enjoying it a great deal - spies, Hemingway, the birth of the CIA, etc. etc. all in exotic Cuba.

It is actually a very fun read.