cover image Havana Requiem

Havana Requiem

Paul Goldstein. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $26 (320p) ISBN 978-0-8090-5393-3

Stanford law professor Goldstein’s cleverly plotted third thriller starring intellectual property specialist Michael Seeley (after 2008’s A Patent Lie) finds Seeley back at Boone, Bancroft, & Meserve, the New York City law firm he was once banished from, despite his being a partner. A potential conflict of interest arises after elderly Cuban musician Hector Reynoso seeks Seeley’s help in retrieving the property rights to music he and friends wrote in the 1940s and 1950s, which have been sold to several publishers, some of which the law firm represents. A client unable to afford the usual hefty fees and the political sensitivity of American-Cuban relations force Seeley to lobby his executive committee before getting the green light to pursue the matter. Seeley ends up in Havana, where the discovery of a corpse complicates the case. Goldstein has no peer in making the dry subject matter of his professional expertise both accessible and engrossing. Agent: Wendy Strothman, the Strothman Agency. (May)