José Latour

José Latour was born in Havana, Cuba, on April 24, 1940. By the time the Cuban Rev­o­lu­tion came to power, José, who was 19, had become an ardent sup­porter. He joined the Min­istry of Trea­sury as a junior finan­cial ana­lyst and trans­la­tor and later moved on to the Cuban Cen­tral Bank. From there he trans­ferred to the Min­istry of Sugar, end­ing up in the State Com­mit­tee of Finance, where from 1977 onwards he swelled the ranks.

Shuf­fling papers, how­ever, was not chal­leng­ing enough. In that same year José started writ­ing crime fic­tion in his spare time. His first three nov­els (Pre­lu­dio a la Noche, Medi­anoche Ene­miga and Fauna Noc­tura), set in pre-revolutionary Havana, were pub­lished by Edi­to­r­ial Letras Cubanas in 1982, 1986 and 1989. The fourth (Choque de Leyen­das), was launched in 1998, nine years after he first deliv­ered the man­u­script to the publisher. He resigned his posi­tion as global finan­cial ana­lyst in the Min­istry of Finance to become a full-time writer. In 1998 he was elected vice-president for Latin Amer­ica of the Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion of Crime Writers.