Dick Cluster

Dick Cluster (est. birth 1947) is an American author, historian, and translator currently based in Oakland, California. He is best known for his Alex Glauberman mystery trilogy. He first visited Havana in 1969 and was active in U.S. radical movements during the 1960s and ’70s. In addition to writing, he is a prominent translator of Cuban and Latin American literature and has taught courses on Cuban history and culture at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.  The Alex Glauberman series is unique for its “regular guy” protagonist—a divorced auto mechanic in Boston who balances amateur sleuthing with real-life struggles like single parenthood and cancer recovery. Alex is explicitly Jewish. He is frequently described as a “mensch”—a person of integrity and honor—which often serves as his primary motivation for getting involved in dangerous cases. At the start of the series, Alex is 41 years old and undergoing chemotherapy for lymphoma. His preoccupation with whether his cancer will return adds a layer of vulnerability and realism to the books.

Series Breakdown

Return to Sender (1988): Alex meets a stranger at a post office who asks him to mail a package to Berlin. When the stranger turns up dead, Alex travels to London and Berlin (during the final years of the Berlin Wall) to find the man’s daughter and clear his own name.

Repulse Monkey (1989): Now recovered from his first bout of chemo, Alex is pulled into a mystery when his babysitter disappears, leading him into a world of Boston old money, corruption, and addiction recovery.

Obligations of the Bone (1992): A medical thriller where a pioneer in bone-marrow transplants hires Alex to investigate a blackmail letter. The story heavily incorporates figures from the 1960s

Cluster, Dick [Alex Glauberman series, #1], (Return to Sender [hc, Dutton, 1988] 978-0525246909 [pb, Penguin Books, 1990] 978-0140127843

Cluster, Dick [Alex Glauberman series, #2], (Repulse Monkey  [hc, Dutton, 1989]) 978-0525248118

Cluster, Dick [Alex Glauberman series, #3], (Obligations of the Bone  [hc, St. Martin’s Press, 1992]) 978-0312082741