José Latour was born in Havana, Cuba, on April 24, 1940. He started reading at a very tender age, progress ing from Hans Christian Andersen and the Grimm brothers as a child to Raymond Chandler and Erle Stanley Gardner in his late teens.
By the time the Cuban Revolution came to power, José, who was 19, had become an ardent supporter. He joined the Ministry of Trea sury 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 (Prelu dio a la Noche, Medi anoche Ene miga and Fauna Noc tura), set in pre-revolutionary Havana, were pub lished by Edi to r ial Letras Cubanas in 1982, 1986 and 1989. The fourth (Choque de Leyen das), was launched in 1998, nine years after he first delivered the manuscript to the publisher.
His first novel in that language, Outcast, was published in the U.S., six Western European countries, Brazil and Japan. It got flattering reviews and was nominated for an Edgar. Since, he has penned Havana Best Friends (2002), Havana World Series (2003), Comrades in Miami (2005), The Young Eng ish man (2006, still unpublished), and Crime of Fashion (2009). Currently he is writ ing his next novel, due in 2010.
