FROM THE PUBLISHER

In 1942, at the height of World War II, Ernest Hemingway sought permission from the U.S. Ambassador to Cuba to operate a spy ring out of his house in the Cuban countryside. This much is true... FBI agent Joe Lucas has come to Cuba at the behest of J. Edgar Hoover to keep an eye on Ernest Hemingway, who has recklessly decided to play spy in the Caribbean. Lucas has been instructed to somehow gain the great writer's trust and friendship, but all the agent's cool intellect and training have left him unprepared to withstand the human whirlwind known as "Papa." Hemingway has assembled a spy ring that he calls the "Crook Factory" - including an American millionaire, a twelve-year-old Cuban orphan, a Spanish jai alai champion, a priest, and a fisherman, among others - to play a dangerous game of amateur espionage. Then, against all odds, Hemingway uncovers a critical piece of intelligence, and the game turns deadly for himself, Lucas, and for untold innocents.

SYNOPSIS

Dan Simmons's latest novel, a departure even by the author's standards, is The Crook Factory, an intricate, beautifully crafted spy thriller based on a little-known episode in the life of its protagonist, Ernest Hemingway, who assembled and ran an amateur spy ring that operated in Cuba in 1942 and 1943.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

In previous novels, Simmons has cast John Keats as an intergalactic emissary (Hyperion) and Mark Twain as an occult adventurer (Fires in Eden). His new excursion in fictional literary biography--and first nonfantasy since Phases of Gravity (1989)--is a gutsy speculation on Ernest Hemingway's exploits in wartime espionage, much of it apparently based on fact. In 1942, Hemingway petitioned the American embassy for help in establishing a counterintelligence outfit he called "The Crook Factory," designed to investigate Nazi activity in his adopted home of Cuba. Joe Lucas, a dedicated if unimaginative young FBI agent, thinks he has been assigned to humor the well-connected writer but soon discovers that Hemingway and his crew of colorful sycophants have stumbled on a Nazi spy nest abuzz with activity. Someone is channeling information through the island's intelligence underground, all of it implicating a host of historical celebrities. The more deeply Hemingway's team probes, the more Lucas is persuaded that the Crook Factory has been deliberately set up as an expendable military subterfuge. As vividly depicted by Simmons, pre-Communist Cuba is an exotic locale whose volatile wartime intrigues are comparable to those of the cinematic Casablanca. It's the perfect milieu for Hemingway, whose larger-than-life evocation must be accounted one of Simmons's sterling literary achievements. The macho figure he cuts here is the stuff of countless Life magazine photos, and his development as Joe's friend and mentor is handled with intelligence and dignity. No one will mistake the novel's immersions in the numbing, repetitive detail of secret service operations for Papa's own concise prose. But the web of conspiracy Simmons spins, the zesty characters it entangles and its intricate cross-weave of fact and fiction distinguish this celebration of the Hemingway centenary. (Feb.)

Library Journal

This delightfully spry novel offers a fictionalized account of Ernest Hemingway, who during the 1930s set up a U.S. government-sanctioned intelligence network, a.k.a. the Crook Factory, in Cuba with a cadre of fishing buddies, waiters, prostitutes, and other unlikely operatives to apprehend Nazi infiltrators. Simmons (The Rise of Endymion, LJ 9/15/97) very cleverly takes one of the actual players, remembered only as Lucas, and morphs him into Joe Lucas, an FBI agent sent by J. Edgar Hoover to keep tabs on Ernesto. The plot quickly evolves into a real page-turning espionage story, complete with corrupt police officials, double agents, secret codes, and multiple murders. Without falling into hero worship, Simmons offers one of the best fictional portraits of Hemingway available. The writer is intelligent and tough but at the same time a hotheaded and reckless amateur. Though Hemingway is the hook, this would be an equally intriguing story without him. Fun reading for both Hemingway aficionados and spy novel enthusiasts. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/98.]--Michael Rogers, "Library Journal"

- SF Site

The Crook Factory is not your usual Dan Simmons-type novel...Dan Simmons has captured the atmosphere of the time perfectly...Within the brilliance of the writing, I had periodic flashes of those old black and white Bogie movies set in the 40s and 50s -- To Have and Have Not, Treasure of the Sierra Madre and despite its towering stature, Casablanca... If you're not a fan of Dan Simmons' startlingly inventive science fiction or his grisly, arresting dark fantasy, you should give The Crook Factory a read.

Adams

From CNN.com

(CNN) - "The Crook Factory" is a World War II espionage story of unique proportions. Set in Cuba, Dan Simmons relays the real-life adventures of Ernest Hemingway & his ragtag counter-espionage crew made up of friends from the Spanish Civil War, including (among others) bartenders, prostitutes, a priest, a millionaire, and a young boy. Perhaps the most impressive characteristic of this work of fiction, however, is that it's 95 percent true.

Simmons, known well among horror and science fiction enthusiasts, tackles a new genre with "The Crook Factory." His research is remarkable and proves for a strong foundation throughout the entire novel.

The protagonist is Lucas, an FBI agent by J. Edgar Hoover to keep an eye on Papa Hemingway during his sojourn into playing spy and chasing German subs in his boat, Pilar. Despite his initial feelings of indifference, Lucas grows quite fond of the writer and his particular slant on life. As history tells us, Hemingway and his crew never sank a German sub. They did, however, manage to discover much about how the FBI did its business in Cuba, some of which hints at conspiracy. In April 1943, "The Crook Factory" was shut down, and until this novel, the story of what went on has never really been told.

I'm always a bit skeptical when an author places real people into a work of fiction. What's more, given the nature of the subject matter, "The Crook Factory" might come off as hard to believe. For this, Simmons relies on historical facts and thorough research.

It's not necessary to be a Hemingway fan to enjoy this book. Although the plot is bound by history, the action is fast-paced and exciting. I found the insights into Hemingway's character and a glimpse into this small period of his life to be well worth the read. According to Simmons, "this period appears to be the basis for the raging paranoia in the last years of Hemingway's life - a period when the writer was certain that he was being followed by the FBI." Is this true, and if so, what could he and his crew have discovered to warrant such activity? Read "The Crook Factory" and find out.

--Ryan Adams

Kirkus Reviews

Simmons leaps from fat genre novels (suspense/horror/sf fantasy) to fat mainstream historical suspense in retelling the story of Ernest Hemingway's submarine-chasing exploits off Cuba in 1942-43. As is often the case with the author's overplanned and hyperdetailed novels, this one boasts proliferating plots and subplots.

At its center lolls the brawnily bravura Falstaffian bully/braggart Hemingway, who at age 43 lives with fourth wife Martha Gellhorn in their finca outside Havana, coasting on the great reviews of For Whom the Bell Tolls from two years earlier and editing his anthology Men at War; Hemingway is also overdrinking and trying to assemble a raggle-taggle spy group (or crook factory) in Havana to support his pursuit of Nazi subs with his famed fishing boat, Pilar, while falling under the spell of the FBI and IRS (who undermine his sanity, causing the paranoia that later leads him to suicide). And that barely scratches the surface.

Simmons also takes on Hemingway's sense of "the-true gen"-that is, how things work: guns, boats, boxing, fishing-and rivals him at his own game by creating a smartly characterized narrator, FBI agent Joe Lucas, who reads no fiction, has never read a word of Hemingway, and outsmarts Papa on boats, boxing, guns, and the true gen of spycraft. Simmons claims that ninety-five percent of his book is "true," derived from FBI files. Regardless, though, what helps vastly is that utter pragmatist Joe Lucas, fatally ill, has only nine months to write the book, unburdened by any strivings for an artistic excellence he knows nothing about. Thus when Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman show up to talk about filming For Whom the Bell Tolls,Joe has only the vaguest idea of what's under discussion.

Also on hand: foppish top spy Commander Ian Fleming, getting charged up for his James Bond novels. For a change, Papa never utters a syllable that rings false. Meantime, Simmons (Children of the Night, 1992, etc.) more than handily ladles out suspense, a German Mata Hari, and a steady stream of solemn bemusement. .