In an on line article published on Januray 4, 2006, Padura talks about his main character, Mario Conde, as follows:
“Mario Conde was born of necessity. I had to have an investigator, a protagonist for Past Perfect (Havana Blue), and this character would be, in the novel, my eyes, my voice, my way of seeing and understanding reality and many things about life. For this reason, he had to be something more than a police officer – and of course, he had to be a different kind of police agent than those in those politicized Cuban crime novels that I mentioned earlier. Thus, Mario Conde had to have a series of personal characteristics, but his sensitivity and intelligence had to shine above all else when it came to interpreting reality. It is for this reason that, even when I knew practically nothing about criminal investigation, he was a man who showed great sensitivity. For him, literature, music, relationships with friends, a vision of the Cuban present and past, were all realities that he participated in because of his sensitivity and intelligence. The result is a man who is a bit disenchanted, skeptical, who defends himself with irony, and who has great loyalties and great phobias. The bottom line was that for Cuban orthodoxy he was a very politically incorrect sort of guy, and for this reason the novel received no prize in a Cuban contest that I sent it to, and it had to be published in Mexico. In any case, the Conde of the first novel was like a dress rehearsal for a character that, starting with the second installment of the “Quartet,” became fully fleshed out and had his own psychology. Already in that installment, Lenten Winds (Havana Gold), is the original title – he is revealed in all his sadness, his pessimism, his painful feelings about life and his merciless examination of the reality in which he lives. Conde is thus totally politically incorrect, but the novel, nonetheless, won the national prize in Cuba and was published immediately. Thus I see Lenten Winds as Conde’s step toward disenchantment, in which he lives in the rest of the “Quartet” novels, and in the other two books which have followed it: Adios, Hemingway (published in English by Canongate) and Yesterday’s Fog (Havana Fever) which came out this year in Spain and which will begin to be translated next year. In these two later novels Conde is not even a police agent any more, since after the “Quartet” he decides to leave the force to feel more free, because he has become sick of his work as a criminal investigator and because his sensitivity has reached its limit and he has to look for some other meaning in his life. (Now he makes a living buying and selling old books, according to him because that way he is closer to literature but not too far from the street…).”
(Read the whole article at Politicalaffairs.net)
A Crime is Afoot 