VETERANS KEY

In Bareford’s thriller, a haunted World War I veteran embarks on a dangerous journey involving crime and passion in Cuba and the Florida Keys.

The year is 1935, and ex-U.S. Army soldier Fred Dunn is scraping out a living cutting keystone in Florida with a 20-man crew as part of the Veterans Work Program. His life abruptly changes course when he meets an attractive young woman named Cindy Rattigan and her best friend, Ella Kaufmann, at a train platform; Cindy quickly seduces Fred, and the two women recruit him for a bank heist in Cuba, led by suave Emilio Ruiz. Things go sideways when a bomb destroys the bank immediately after the theft, as part of a suspected Communist terrorist attack, and Fred is questioned by the Havana police. As he navigates his new role in a criminal underworld, he grapples with lingering PTSD and a shocking discovery about one of his female companions. Meanwhile, an approaching hurricane may destroy everything—and everyone—that Fred cares about. In an author’s note, Bareford tells of how his main characters were largely based on real-life historical figures, but they’re also clearly inspired by noir. However, the dialogue—which often runs for pages at time with only a sentence or two of narration to break things up—comes across as excessively mannered: “My friend Cindy took me along on this overnighter to Havana, so she and her sugar daddy could casino hop and rumba till the cows come home at the Tropicana.” As a result, several characters, such as femme fatale Cindy, come across as little more than caricatures, resulting in a lack of emotional depth. That said, Bareford skillfully weaves in real history about such things as veterans’ camps and the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane, and he expounds upon them in engaging notes at the end that give the eventful plot a pleasing sense of real-world consequence.

A crime novel with compelling historical details that gets bogged down by over-the-top characters and dialogue.