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Street 8: A novel
205 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1977
About the author
Douglas Fairbairn
16 books4 followersDouglas Behl Fairbairn was an American author.
His novels include A Man's World (1956), A Squirrel of One's Own (1971), Shoot (1973), A Squirrel Forever (1975), Street 8 (1977) and his memoir, Down and Out in Cambridge (1982).
His screen credits include the television episode "A Man's World" (based on his novel of the same title) for Studio One in Hollywood, the episode "The Voice of Charlie Pont" on Alcoa Premiere (1962), and a full-length feature film from his novel Shoot (1976; adapted by Richard Berg).
He attended but did not graduate from Harvard College, where he was editor of the Harvard Lampoon. He returned to the Miami area where he would live out the rest of his life.
His novels include A Man's World (1956), A Squirrel of One's Own (1971), Shoot (1973), A Squirrel Forever (1975), Street 8 (1977) and his memoir, Down and Out in Cambridge (1982).
His screen credits include the television episode "A Man's World" (based on his novel of the same title) for Studio One in Hollywood, the episode "The Voice of Charlie Pont" on Alcoa Premiere (1962), and a full-length feature film from his novel Shoot (1976; adapted by Richard Berg).
He attended but did not graduate from Harvard College, where he was editor of the Harvard Lampoon. He returned to the Miami area where he would live out the rest of his life.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 17, 2010
This little-known noir novel, in hardcover, by Douglas Fairbairn (1977) is a gem! It's a dark tale of Miami in its pre-cocaine-cowboy, pre-Miami-Vice days, when the Cuban presence was strong, and when exile politics were in a state of violent flux. I recommend this book to all noir fans and fans of Florida fiction. For a more comprehensive review, see my website http://mikedennisnoir.com
The correct title, by the way, is Street 8.
The correct title, by the way, is Street 8.
August 26, 2017
This is a well-written book about some pretty awful people, including a protagonist who's done something so awful you would not want to hang around with him in real life. "Street 8" is set in Miami in the pre-Cocaine Cowboys, pre-Miami Vice days of the '70s, as that particular street was going from 8th Street to what we now know as Calle Ocho.
The story centers on the owner of the last Anglo used car lot on the street, ex-Marine Bobby Mead, who has an attractive 17-year-old daughter and an on-again, off-again romance with a doctor. He lives in a rundown hotel on South Beach that has a hole in the window that lets in blowing sand. Mead hires a Cuban salesman who at first does a good job of drawing in his fellow Cubans, then gets mixed up in politics and winds up being shot dead in the car lot office.
Then Mead's beaten up by the people who killed his salesmen and offered a deal: Either let them use his garage in exchange for a lot of money, or they will do horrible things to his daughter and kill him too. He agrees, and his life begins to slide off the rails.
Fairbairn writes a beautiful sentence, and there are plenty of wonderful scenes in this book, particularly the ones that show us all the wrong turnings Mead took to get to this point in his life, owner of a failing used-car lot. At one point his girlfriend observes that he lives in his miserable hotel room because he's punishing himself for something, and she's right. He's done just about the worst thing a parent can do, and once I read that chapter I had a hard time rooting for him any more. Bobby's a pretty awful person and he really does deserve what life dishes out to him. There's also a chapter concerning his discovery of what his daughter's been up to that is really hard to read because it's so graphic.
That said, I didn't see the ending coming, because it's not quite what you expect. So that was good. And I did like the descriptions of what Miami was like in the '70s. But that whole subplot about the daughter makes it hard to recommend to anyone else.
The story centers on the owner of the last Anglo used car lot on the street, ex-Marine Bobby Mead, who has an attractive 17-year-old daughter and an on-again, off-again romance with a doctor. He lives in a rundown hotel on South Beach that has a hole in the window that lets in blowing sand. Mead hires a Cuban salesman who at first does a good job of drawing in his fellow Cubans, then gets mixed up in politics and winds up being shot dead in the car lot office.
Then Mead's beaten up by the people who killed his salesmen and offered a deal: Either let them use his garage in exchange for a lot of money, or they will do horrible things to his daughter and kill him too. He agrees, and his life begins to slide off the rails.
Fairbairn writes a beautiful sentence, and there are plenty of wonderful scenes in this book, particularly the ones that show us all the wrong turnings Mead took to get to this point in his life, owner of a failing used-car lot. At one point his girlfriend observes that he lives in his miserable hotel room because he's punishing himself for something, and she's right. He's done just about the worst thing a parent can do, and once I read that chapter I had a hard time rooting for him any more. Bobby's a pretty awful person and he really does deserve what life dishes out to him. There's also a chapter concerning his discovery of what his daughter's been up to that is really hard to read because it's so graphic.
That said, I didn't see the ending coming, because it's not quite what you expect. So that was good. And I did like the descriptions of what Miami was like in the '70s. But that whole subplot about the daughter makes it hard to recommend to anyone else.
November 10, 2022
"Miami is a North American banana republic".---Journalist Max Castro (no relation to Fidel)
A hard-boiled crime novel set in Cuban Miami? Si, and the crazy thing is that this Yanqui author managed to get the politics, crime, corruption, sex and sin just right. The year is 1977, when anti-Castro groups in Miami bombed and shot at each other nearly every day. (One car bomb killed Fidel Castro's one-time friend and later nemesis Manolo "El Tigre" Ferrer.) Our hero is Bobby Mead, "the last American store owner on Eight Street in Little Havana. (Cuban-Americans call it Calle 8.) Surrounded by los cubanos Bobby tries to stay clear of politics until one morning coming to work at his used auto dealership he finds his Cuban assistant Hector murdered. Since the police are powerless, or under the thumb of what Fidel liked to call "the Miami Mafia", Bobby begins his own investigation. This earns him death threats from anti-Castro exile groups and, much more maliciously, a piece of gossip, which turns out to be true, about his long-missing daughter, whom Bobby has not seen since his divorce. Bobby's response is to go on a rampage against the Cubans, whom it turns out, are not out to oust Castro after all; they sniff and take aim at political power much closer to home---a golpe de estado right in Miami! Caveat: STREET 8 contains a sexual subplot many readers, especially in 2022, might find offensive and certainly shocking. Fairbairn went on to write other crime novels set in South Florida, much as John McDonald located all his "Travis Magee" detective novels in the Florida Panhandle. It is time for readers to rediscover this Seventies gem.
A hard-boiled crime novel set in Cuban Miami? Si, and the crazy thing is that this Yanqui author managed to get the politics, crime, corruption, sex and sin just right. The year is 1977, when anti-Castro groups in Miami bombed and shot at each other nearly every day. (One car bomb killed Fidel Castro's one-time friend and later nemesis Manolo "El Tigre" Ferrer.) Our hero is Bobby Mead, "the last American store owner on Eight Street in Little Havana. (Cuban-Americans call it Calle 8.) Surrounded by los cubanos Bobby tries to stay clear of politics until one morning coming to work at his used auto dealership he finds his Cuban assistant Hector murdered. Since the police are powerless, or under the thumb of what Fidel liked to call "the Miami Mafia", Bobby begins his own investigation. This earns him death threats from anti-Castro exile groups and, much more maliciously, a piece of gossip, which turns out to be true, about his long-missing daughter, whom Bobby has not seen since his divorce. Bobby's response is to go on a rampage against the Cubans, whom it turns out, are not out to oust Castro after all; they sniff and take aim at political power much closer to home---a golpe de estado right in Miami! Caveat: STREET 8 contains a sexual subplot many readers, especially in 2022, might find offensive and certainly shocking. Fairbairn went on to write other crime novels set in South Florida, much as John McDonald located all his "Travis Magee" detective novels in the Florida Panhandle. It is time for readers to rediscover this Seventies gem.
December 22, 2022
if your are from Miami and you remember the late 70's to 80's you will love this book
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews