BECAUSE IN 1961, NO ONE WOULD HAVE CALLED FIDEL CASTRO THE RETIRING TYPE

There were five of them, each prepared to kill, each with his own reasons for accepting what might well be a suicide mission. The pay? $20,000 apiece. The mission? Find a way into Cuba and kill Castro.

This breathtaking thriller, originally published the year before the Cuban Missile Crisis under a pen name Lawrence Block never used before or since, is the rarest of Block’s books—and still a work of chilling relevance all these years later, with Castro and Cuba once again commanding headlines.