Roger Director’s New Novel Is Killing In Havana

Roger Director’s new novel Killing in Havana begins in Miami at an old age home, where Nifty, an old school Jewish comedian, is visiting his father and his friends, with whom they trade jokes. Soon after, Nifty gets a potentially career making gig as the opening act for a singer at Havana’s best hotel.

Here’s the twist, it’s the late 1950s, and Castro has recently seized power, but the Mob is still running the casinos, and the entertainment, proceeding in the belief that they have an arrangement that’s going to work out (spoiler alert: It doesn’t).

Now, I am a long-time admirer of Roger Director’s writing, going back to his days as a contributor to the Daily News, as well as his successful years as a TV writer on such shows as Moonlighting, Mad About You, NCIS. Roger’s first novel, A Place to Fall, I enjoyed as much for the sentence-by-sentence craftmanship as for the plot.

However, nothing I had read of Roger’s prepared me for Killing in Havana, which conjures a whole lost world that is rich in classic Jewish Jokes (both the good and the bad ones), as well as the meticulously researched Havana detail. Just as enjoyable are the cameos by none other than Meyer Lansky, his brother Jack, and then there’s this other club owner you may have heard of, Jack Ruby, who turns up in conversation. The writing is very vivid, and you feel like you’re there wandering the Malecon, schmoozing with Cuba’s few Jews and the many goombahs residing there. There are the Cubans trying themselves to adapt to Castro, those who have joined the revolution, and those who still to hope to stage an insurrection.

They all seem to converge at a performance by Nifty at the Salon Rojas of the Hotel Habana Riviera (the hotel owned by Lansky) that remains the novel’s high point —as well as the low point for the Mafia in Havana, and for Nifty as well.

Killing in Havana is a fun summer read. And when you read it, you’ll already be imagining the limited series or film. Enjoy!