If you like Hemingway, or even if you don't that much (I find it hard to read that "the man and the girl" stuff), you will probably like this book. It's about Hemingway's little amateur spy ring in Cuba during WWII. Fictionalized, but based on facts. ( )

Based on the real-life story of Ernest Hemingway's amateur spy ring in Cuba during the Second World War, *The Crook Factory* is Dan Simmons' fictionalized version of the events that took place in 1942-43 in and around Hemingway's Cuban villa.

]It is meticulously researched and a good story, but it fell flat for me in a couple of ways. First, there are a few too many winks at the reader, statements made by characters of the mid-20th century that any reader in the 21st century would know to be wrong. One particularly clunky example:

"'Rather more [J Edgar Hoover's] style to haul you up in front of a Senate committee investigating Communist infiltration and discredit you or send you to jail'
'There's no such thing as a witch-hunt committee like that,' said Hemingway."

Second, it felt at times that nothing of what Simmons found in the archives was left out of the book. The story is fascinating, but the way it is presented, it is overburdened by detail and research. As he has Hemingway state at one point, "Only you have to avoid showing off... parading all the things you know like marching captured soldiers through the capitol."

In his other historical fictions, *Drood* and *The Terror*, Simmons does an excellent job of not letting his research get in the way. *The Crook Factory* was originally published in 1999 (this is a re-release by Mulholland Books), and maybe, by the time he wrote the later novels, Simmons learned how to incorporate his research more naturally into the narrative.

Perhaps the best review is done by the narrator himself. At the end of the book, he is reflecting on his time with Hemingway, and the best way to write about it. "In later years, Hemingway was quoted as saying that a novel was like an iceberg--seven-eighths of it should be invisible.... I knew that I would never be good enough as a writer to tell the story that way." ( )

Another Simmons history novel. And a very good one at that. Simmons has a unique method of placing a fictional character into something that may or not have happened. Usually the story is told by that fictional character in their final years. The Crook Factory is a solid page turner. A true love letter to Hemingway who is probably one of the most misunderstood writers of the 20th century. Simmons is a true magician with plot and subtext. The more of his material I read the higher I put him on the literary food chain. It seems he is able to get more out of a story than his contemporaries. The conversation our protagonist with has with EH about not wanting to end a story is a beyond brilliant way of Simmons telling his audience....."You want a story...well, I am going to give you the whole thing and then some. ( )

A fun premise but ultimately a pretty generic thriller. I think Simmons and I are quits. ( )

OMG. Okay, let's face it. Dan Simmons is a consummate author. Consummate because he does a TON of fantastic research, thorough follow-through, and fantastic characters. Not only that, but he happens to have been one of my favorite authors ever since I read Hyperion back in the day. Since then, he's equally well-known as a hard-SF writer and an epic horror novelist, equally good in either branch....

But then something weird happened. He's been writing historical novels. I didn't quite realize this until now, which makes me kinda an idiot. I read Drood which was all about Dickens and Wilkie Collins, and then there's the Terror and THIS novel. And there's more, obviously.

I'm ... frankly blown away. Drood was everything in Victorian England. This was utterly WWII Cuba. :) HEMINGWAY, FOLKS! As the author names it, 95% of everything in this novel is true, and whatever narrative liberties he makes, it's all for the good.

Ernest Hemingway ran his own spy ring fighting the Nazis in Cuba. Notable persons involved in the tale are Hoover, Ian Flemming, Ingrid Bergman, Gary Cooper, a wide cast of real people I have no idea about, and it all makes for a rollickingly awesome spy tale. :)

For anyone who knows anything about Hemingway, he's a man's man with a lot of animal charisma that shines through not just his fantastic prose, but in his real-life actions. It would be super easy to go on and on about the man, but that's just it. He had a really fascinating life.

Many wives, a lost briefcase of all his early short stories, getting shot up in wars, serving as war correspondents and an ambulance driver, being a huge part of the Lost Generation, being an expatriate, and generally being a superstar literary genius. To be treated with a novelization of his spy ring, tho? The Crook Factory? ...Is something truly extraordinary. :)

But I should mention that this will only appeal to fans of Hemingway, spy fiction in general, WWII buffs, and the positively curious. Otherwise, all this name dropping focus on the man will go to waste. Alas.

Good thing I'm a fan of everything that went on here, right? :) ( )