Harbor of Spies

January 22, 2018
Lloyd’s second novel, after Rough Passage to London, is a swashbuckling spy adventure set in 1863 Havana, Cuba, that follows Everett Townsend, an American sea captain arrested for sedition. To gain his freedom, Everett reluctantly agrees to become a blockade runner for a corrupt merchant, supporting the Confederate cause by using his ship to carry contraband war material to the South and return to Havana with valuable cargoes of cotton. This is lucrative but dangerous work; Everett evades blockading Union warships, becomes involved with an old unsolved murder, and discovers British complicity in the Spanish slave trade that drives the Cuban economy. Disgusted with Spanish brutality toward slaves, Everett agrees to spy for the Union, putting himself in even more peril and leading the story to a climactic escape sequence. Everett’s family melodrama and a romance plot are also included, but the real draw is Lloyd’s excellent historical detail.

February 15, 2018
Cuba's capital, Havana, a neutral port during the U.S. Civil War, serves as a base for Confederate trade and plotting and corresponding Union espionage. In Lloyd's (Rough Passage to London, 2013) exciting second novel, set in 1863, this Spanish-controlled city swarms with activity, from the shipping industry's constant din to the masquerade dances that serve as an apt metaphor for individuals' covert motives. Everett Townsend, a 19-year-old American schooner captain, gets drawn into danger after rescuing an escaped English prisoner. Blackmailed by a Spanish merchant into smuggling cargo through the Union blockade of the South, Townsend gathers a crew and follows his assignment while pondering his moral quandary. The shipboard action is exhilarating, and intrigue beckons on land, too, with intertwining subplots about a British diplomat's unresolved murder, a mystery involving Townsend's late Cuban mother, and his growing affections for an innkeeper's daughter. The story eventually leads him straight into the dark, cruel heart of the Cuban economy. This is an involving reading experience for maritime fans and landlubbers alike. One hopes Townsend's adventures will continue in future books.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)