The story begins in 1955 as Victor Salazar tells his son Raul good-bye. Raul has to leave Cuba and immigrate to the USA with only one thousand dollars in his pocket. Victor will remain behind to face the consequences of stealing millions from an organized crime family.

Years pass and Raul opens a bar-restaurant where one is able to smoke fine Cuban cigars. The time is 1963 and wealthy Cornelius Gessleman, father-in-law of Florida Congressman Wesley Cameron, has become enamored with the Salazar cigars. Facing an embargo, he learns that President Kennedy has the cigars he now wants.

To help his father in law, Wesley "makes arrangements" for Raul to 'deliver" these self-same stogies to them. Word filters down that Kennedy's wine and cigar cellars were raided the weekend he was assassinated in Dallas. Wesley fears the plot had more to do with cigars than politics. Raul has a hidden agenda as well. His love, Rosa the revolutionary, is still in Cuba and needs money to finance clinics and provide food for starving refugees. The cigars could provide a nice untaxed source of funds for them.

There is a further complication. Victor had taken the missing syndicate money, purchased cut diamonds and rolled them into the cigars that the Salazar family manufactured. His plan was to send the cigars to his son. When "Joey the Boss" discovers diamonds in one of the cigars, he is off and running to obtain the rest of the cigars. Every time one thinks the cigars are in sight they end up some place else.

Where There’s Smoke could have been a wonderful book but there is almost no character development; and scenes shift so quickly that it is often hard to keep up, not to mention the fact that it is difficult at times to tell whether the voice is in the past or present.

Each character is presented fully blown and represents an extreme stereotype: the "typical" crime boss, unscrupulous Southern capitalist, organized crime boss, hit man, bungling thief, committed revolutionary, kept Congressman, clever hero of easy virtue, all say and do what a knowledgeable reader has come to expect. But the sharp and skillful way in which they all come together is what makes this satire interesting reading.

--Thea Davis