Books: Kahawa By Donald E. Westlake (1982/1995)

“In Uganda in 1977, a particular trainload of coffee, mostly belonging to Dictator Idi Amin, is worth six million dollars. As a group of scoundrels and international financiers hijack the train, the double and triple crosses pile up and the comic tension escalates in a brawling brew of buffoons, bumblers, beans and boxcars.” 

 

For one reason or another, I’ve put off reading this book for a while. Part of the reason was the length – as I’ve gotten older, books longer than 475 to 500 plus pages are not worth my time (with a few exceptions), as I have so books in my TBR pile (and add to it monthly). In addition, Westlake was known for lean plots with little to none extraneous plots and characters to keep track of. The other was that some Westlake scholars, for lack of a better word, have mixed feelings about the narrative, the people, and the fact that it’s only a handful of novels he set outside his beloved New York City (those always seemed to be seen in a negative light).

 

As I noted in a Part One, the heist idea was supposedly based on a true story, but while it’s certainly possible some smuggling went on in Uganda during Idi Aimn’s dictatorship, it’s probable not as elaborate as the one described here (as a matter of fact, in his Afterword, Westlake notes that “something similar did take place”, his description and all the characters -with a few exemptions of real-life ones- is all made up by him (then again, in the prologue, which is unconnected to the rest of the plot, is a reference to the real-life event on which the novel is based).

 

I would say I liked this book, even if it’s different than anything he usually did. There is a lot more geo-political stuff, along with some racial and sexual commentary. As matter of fact, he surprised me (and probably a lot of his longtime reader), by having some extremely explicit sex scenes in this book. Probably far more than in all those paperback ‘porn’ titles he wrote under multiple pseudonyms in the 1950s to support his family before he became a success in later decades. In some ways, while this is a heist novel, filled with real life death and violence, it’s also, strangely a relationship book, with Lew Brady seemly dealing with a trio of women who want to have sex with in. And Lew, who likes having these affairs, also loves Ellen (even if sex is seemly the only thing that connects them). But in being this way, both Lew and Ellen are not that very interesting characters.

 

Anyways, there are a lot plot elements in this book than I can't possibly synopsize here, and I have no desire to extend this review to a third part. What I can say is the book is good, not great, it carries a lot of violence, commentary on the Amin regime (which came about due a coup backed by the British and the Israelis in 1971, and who odiously came to regret it. But even as Westlake unflinchingly describes a number of killings, including those of two major characters, it is not a nasty book like some of his darker thrillers; only Amin and his regime are portrayed as nasty).

 

It’s worth the read, even if a tips into being a bit overlong. But I would also agree with most Westlake scholars, this is not the book to start reading his oeuvre. It’s too complex and you don’t really get what he was doing here until you’ve read a few of his thrillers, a handful of Parker tales, and some of more humorous tales. 

Books: Kahawa By Donald E. Westlake, Part One

I just started my first Westlake novel of 2025 and decided to do some research after reading the Introduction to this hardcover edition. 

This is part one of two (which I’ll post after finishing the book). 

So, in the introduction to the 1995 reissue hardcover, Donald E. Westlake writes about this caper tale that was so different from what he written before, that when it was originally released in 1982, it was not a bestseller for him. 

The genesis of the novel is based on true story (though there is no evidence that can confirm this actually did happen in reality) about “a group of white mercenaries, in Uganda, while it was under Idi Amin, stole a railroad train a mile long, full of coffee, and made it disappear.” As Westlake writes, he was known for both serious (the Parker tales under his pseudonym of Richard Stark) and comic (the Dortmunder series) capers. The more outrageous the theft, the more interesting the idea was to him. He writes “Once, for instance, before the government started paying by check, Parker stole the entire payroll from a United States Air Force Base (The Green Eagle Score). Dortmunder, not to be outdone, has made off with a complete bank, temporarily housed in a mobile home (Bank Shot). And what could be more outrageous than to steal a mile-long train from the dread Idi Amin, and make it disappear?” 

But then he began his research and it sent him down a dark hole (“Research is my own personal Sargasso Sea”) and discovered that there was much more to tell than stealing a train that he would need to incorporate into the tale. One was the fact that under Amin’s years in power, his primary goal was to rid Uganda of Christians. But in a country made up at the time of some sixteen million people, where seventy-five percent identified as Christians, it meant including parts about how roughly five hundred thousand men, women, and children were slaughtered not because they were political, or rebellious, or dangerous, but because they were Christians. 

So Kahawa (the Swahili word for coffee) had to be an exciting caper tale, but also needed to include the horrors of Amin’s dictatorship (which is why, in some sense, the book’s title is so different as well. Westlake’s original was Coffee to Go, but that eventually “slunk off in embarrassment”).

He sold the book to Viking, but the publishing house “was in the midst of an upheaval” and his original editor was let go and the replacement one, what he called an “oil painting of an editor”, couldn’t figure out how to help market the book and felt no one would really want to read a caper novel with such dark and terrible parts to it (this event in his publishing life was the genesis of his 1984 comic novel that took on the publishing industry, A Likely Story). 

When Westalke moved to Warner Books, who through their Mysterious Press imprint, began reissuing a lot of older Westlake titles, as well as new ones, Kahawa was given a second chance at life. In the thirty years since that re-release, it’s probably still one Westlake’s less popular titles. But even as prolific as the man was, he could, on occasion, throw a left curve and surprise readers, both long-time ones and new. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

Books: All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby (2023)

“Titus Crown is the first Black sheriff in the history of Charon County, Virginia. In recent decades, Charon has had only two murders. After years of working as an FBI agent, Titus knows better than anyone that while his hometown might seem like a land of moonshine, cornbread, and honeysuckle, secrets always fester under the surface. Then a year to the day after Titus’s election, a school teacher is killed by a former student and the student is fatally shot by Titus’s deputies. Those festering secrets are now out in the open and ready to tear the town apart. As Titus investigates the shootings, he unearths terrible crimes and a serial killer who has been hiding in plain sight, haunting the dirt lanes and woodland clearings of Charon. With the killer’s possible connections to a local church and the town’s harrowing history weighing on him, Titus projects confidence about closing the case while concealing a painful secret from his own past. At the same time, he also has to contend with a far-right group that wants to hold a parade in celebration of the town’s Confederate history.” 

I generally liked the book; the pacing was fine, the body count high and the gore kept to a minimum. It starts with a school shooting, but instead of a massacre, we end up with a dead teacher (everyone’s favorite, all loved by both the white and black students). The killer is a troubled teen who is killed by police after spouting off some religious phrases. When Titus and his team begin their investigation, they realize Mr. Spearman had many secrets, one being a serial killer. Eventually, they find the bodies of teen boys and girls and going through both Spearman’s phone and computer, see the shocking videos and images of three people mutilating and killing these kids. With two of them dead –Spearman and Latrell- Titus must piece together the clues to find the third man before he can kill again. 

All the Sinners Bleed is a dark, gritty, thriller. But like the other book I read by Cosby, Razorblade Tears, I did not adore the book. It’s got some unsettling scenes, and despite some minor issues with skirmishes with the white people of Charon, it does not dwell on them deeply. However, I felt the women were a collection of stereotypes, and the only way we get to know them is through their relationship with Titus. Plus, his deputy sheriff Carla’s race is never really explored. I did not know if she was white, black, or Latino (and the only hint we get is someone calls her “J.Lo” and even that is not followed up on). 

I also had issue with the killers reveal. He only shows up in the last few pages of the book (and nowhere else) and for a mystery novel that is also a classic whodunit, this seems like terrible idea. Agatha Christie pulled this trick a few times and it’s a trope that should never be used again (also, it’s never revealed why Spearman and Latrell got involved with the killer to begin with, which is odd). 

There a bunch of subplots that are mentioned and go nowhere, or dropped completely. And despite being haunted by actions as an FBI agent, when Cosby finally reveals what happened to Titus in Indiana, I felt that Red DeCrain got what he deserved.

While Cosby’s writing is still evolving, he clearly is borrowing his prose style from other popular writers, noticeably Stephen King and Walter Mosley. It may be considered pretentious, but you have to stick out some way, I guess.

Books: Standing By the Wall (Slough House 8.5) by Mick Herron (2022)

“Roddy Ho is used to being the one the slow horses turn to when they need miracles performed, and he’s always been Jackson Lamb’s Number Two.  So when Lamb has a photograph that needs doctoring, it’s Ho he entrusts with the task.  Christmas is a time for memories, but Lamb doesn’t do memories – or so he says.  But what is it about the photo that makes him want to alter it?  How would the slow horses cope if Roddy Ho did not exist?  And most importantly of all, are the team having Christmas drinks, and if so, where? 

Standing by the Wall is (currently) the last novella that Slough House creator Mick Herron has written. Here we see Roddy Ho, the teams punching bag (99.0% deserved) of weirdness and (in Ho’s mind), Jackson Lamb’s Number Two, the Q to this small clown car of slow horses, the apparent lynchpin for Slough Houses entire “success”, demanded by Lamb to alter a photograph of three people. Basically remove the center figure. Who that person is –that’s not revealed- but the one on the left is a much younger Jackson Lamb and the other Molly Dornan, the Park’s archivist and –perhaps- Lamb’s only friend. 

The other part is a setup for the return of River Cartwright, who was apparently left for dead at the end of book seven. We learn that River was dosed with novichok, a family of nerve agents developed by the Soviet Union and Russia between 1971 and 1993. He’s still has a few weeks left before returning to duty, but because it was Christmas, he felt this was a good chance to see his friends and meet the newest recruit, Ashley. But it’s clear he has some reservations here, mostly because his relationship with Sid has grown. 

There is also, apparently a reference to Operation Monochrome, which appears to be link to his stand-alone spy thriller Secret Hours. 

Otherwise, Lamb is Lamb and it’ll be interesting if this picture will tie into a later novel. But it also serves as another glimpse into Lamb’s murky past. 

Which bring me to the short story Last Dead Letter (which is set just after David Cartwright’s funeral in the novel Joe Country). Here is another glimpse into Lamb’s past. 

”Molly Dornan is there waiting to extract her pound of flesh from Jackson Lamb for an earlier favor. In this case, it’s learning the truth to a story Dornan has found in her precious archives. She’s put most of the pieces together but needs Lamb for the last bits of the puzzle. Molly enjoys closing off those unknown loops in her files wherever possible. The tale she tells is of “Dominic Cross”, an agent runner in Berlin, he’s a little crooked and drinks too much but always looks after his joes. Cross is a veteran of the spy game, but been in Berlin too long. He makes the misjudgment that many spies seem to make – he falls in love. When the Stasi opposition finds a way to turn this against him the question becomes whether he can find a way out of the devil’s choice he’s been given. Does he choose the life of his lover or his joe?” 

For a short story, the Last Dead Letter gives us a lot of information to parse through. Here Herron creates a pretty good atmosphere of Cold War Berlin and as you read, you get a sense that this Cross is really Lamb (but while the whole series is just a variation on themes presented before, I had hoped that this was one trope Herron would avoid – the British spy who falls for the German spy). And I can guess this was Herron’s attempt at giving his long-time readers, who are eager to learn of more of Lamb’s life before Slough House, a reason to read the tale. But there is a twist, as always, and we learn really nothing more beyond the fact that even some forty years earlier, Cross called his watcher The Shit.  

Like all the novellas and this short story, they are not necessary reads. But for those completists out there, these tales are like bits of candy in small packages, but sometimes, usually at the end, they turn tart.

Books: Bad Actors (Slough House #8) by Mick Herron (2022)

“A governmental think-tank, whose remit is to curb the independence of the intelligence service, has lost one of its key members, and Claude Whelan—one-time head of MI5's Regent’s Park—is tasked with tracking her down. But the trail leads straight back to the Park itself, with Diana Taverner as chief suspect. Has Diana overplayed her hand at last? What’s her counterpart, Moscow’s First Desk, doing in London? And does Jackson Lamb know more than he’s telling? Over at Slough House, with Shirley Dander in rehab, Roddy Ho in dress rehearsal, and new recruit Ashley Khan turning up the heat, the slow horses are doing what they do best, and adding a little bit of chaos to an already unstable situation. There are bad actors everywhere, and they usually get their comeuppance before the credits roll. But politics is a dirty business, and in a world where lying, cheating and backstabbing are the norm, sometimes the good guys can find themselves outgunned.” 

For the eighth book in the Slough House/Slow Horses series, Herron mixes up the narrative structure of Bad Actors, and begins the story with a long flashback that starts two thirds into the tale. It begins with Oliver Nash meeting up with previous First Desk, Claude Wheelan. Nash wants a favor and Wheelan should have enough sense to steer clear, but convinces himself to look into the whereabouts of a missing associate of Anthony Sparrow (The PM {a jab at Boris Johnson} is seen as a useless figurehead, and it appears the government is really being run by this manipulative aide and all around sleazebag {another jab at Dominic Cummings}). Dr. Sophia de Greer is a superforecaster upon whom Sparrow relies. But she's been AWOL for several days. Sparrow points fingers at Diana Taverner, the First Desk of the Secret Service. Because it becomes clear Sparrow's real objective is to collect all branches of government under his direct control by any means. Something Lady Di does not want. 

Bad Actors is another complex tale of spies vs. spies, political absurdities, lies, and mischievous antics in governmental circles. As usual, though, there is also plenty of dark humor, some misdirection, mistaken identity, and manipulation. Jackson Lamb also calls in semi-retired John Bachelor (from the numerous novellas) to play a more central role than usual. And Herron also has great fun teasing us readers, making us wait until the very end to conclude a particular storyline from the last book. 

I’ve now caught up with the novels, and beside one novella yet to go, I’ll be waiting until next month for Clown Town, the ninth novel in this series. It means, as well, I’ll be buying my first hardcover, because I doubt I can wait until next summer to read it in paperback. And somewhere along the way, I’ll want to see the Apple+ TV show of these books.