A first novel which doesn't tell too much of a story, but does score, sometimes sardonically, sometimes sympathetically, a mixed group of people in and around Havana. Here, pursued with a rather disheveled decadence, are the feverish rounds of dove shoots, drinks, and erotic experiences as taken up by residents and tourists. There's Sam, whom the war has left nerved up and bitter; Elsa, the German born girl he meets there and whose antecedence he hates; Philip, his father, a painter, lost and lonely; Sophie, whose life work was getting one man after another and who first made for Philip- then Sam; Florina, a tart too, but honest in her profession; and the dissipated, Falangist Marques and Marques. A series of incidents in the lives of all these ends as the Marques is murdered, as Florina falls in love for the last time, as Sam takes Elsa back to the U.S. with him. Not the ""brightest sort of entertainment"" but possibly for more sophisticated tastes.