Florida Straits
by Laurence Shames
from Dell
Joey Goldman's flying south for the winter. The  second-string New York wiseguy just packed up his  faithful girlfriend Sandra and took off for Key  West -- land of sun, surf and sleaze -- where a  small-time hustler in search of a racket can score the  big one. If he can find it. Enter Joey's half  brother Gino. On the lam from the mob after one of  the most royally screwed-up jewel heists in Florida  history, Gino's a man in need of a fall guy.  Which is where Joey comes in . .  .
Suddenly, everyone's after Joey -- including the  ruthless Miami don who wants his three million worth  of uncut emeralds and who just dispatched his goons  to deliver Joey a one-way ticket -- out. Now  Joey's where he always wanted to be -- in the big time.  All he has to do is find out where the stones are  stashed. And for an unikely hero out to make a  killing, this could be Paradise . . . if he lives  long enough.
Welcome to Paradise
by Laurence Shames
from Fawcett
Take Big Al, an inept minor-league Mafioso who's boss of a New York fish market, and send him to Key West. Have a rival who'd like to take over the market put out a contract on said mobster. Then give the hit man just enough information to make sure he fingers the wrong guy. That's not hard when both the target and an innocent tourist have the same vanity plate, even though one's a short guy with a big dog and the other's a big guy with a small dog. At first the only thing Big Al of the Mob and Big Al the furniture salesman from New Jersey have in common is their desire for a few days of R and R in the Sunshine State. But by the time the salesman's been nearly done in by a ton of rancid calamari and has narrowly escaped death by stuffed sailfish, there's another link between the two Al's, and therein lies the tale. That link is a beautiful woman named Katy Sansone.
Will Big Al the Good end up with Katy, the dissatisfied girlfriend of Big Al the Bad? Perhaps, and between the setup and the payoff there are plenty of laughs and a few implausible coincidences. Laurence Shames's seventh Key West adventure is a good read for a day at the beach or an afternoon in the hammock for mystery fans who can't wait for the next Carl Hiaasen. --Jane Adams
Before mild-mannered furniture salesman Al Tuschman left New Jersey for a week in Key West, he hadn't an enemy in the world. But a series of puzzling assaults on his privacy, his sanity, and his life has turned his stay at the tasteful Paradise Hotel into Tropical Hell. Maybe it's the humidity. Maybe the Sambuca. Or maybe it's the nickname emblazoned on his license plate: Big Al.
For Big Al Marracotta, Mafia capo, a Florida getaway means outrunning a career in crime and rancid calamari. For Katy Sansone it's a bid for sunshine and self-respect--until a case of mistaken identity pits the confused woman against a bafflement of Als and more danger than any one of them had reason to pack for. Now, if Tuschman doesn't watch his back, somebody's going to be reporting the death of another salesman. . . .
Virgin Heat
by Laurence Shames
from Backinprint.com
Meet Angelina Amaro, the star-crossed daughter of Mafia capo Paul Amaro. For ten long years virginal Angelina has been carrying a secret torch for the stool pigeon who betrayed her father to the cops in exchange for a spot in the Witness Protection Program. When she recognizes her beloved's hands mixing drinks in a relative's Key West vacation video, Angelina stops pining and starts planning her escape from her family and reunion with her man Sal, who now goes by the name of Ziggy Maxx. Naturally, the course of true love never did run smoothly, and it isn't long before Papa is on her trail with hilarious results.
Playing the Mafia for laughs is a novel idea, and it works quite well in Laurence Shames' fifth book, Virgin Heat. In Angelina, Mr. Shames has found a sympathetic heroine, and in his collection of undercover cops, cross-dressing mafiosi, vengeful hit men, and long-suffering wives, he has created a memorable cast of supporting characters.
Mafia princess Angelina Amaro has only ever loved one man—and that lone affair was never consummated. Why not? Because her would-be lover, Sal Martucci, fled into the Witness Protection Program … after ratting out Angelina’s father. When Sal is discovered working as a bartender in Key West, the wildly dysfunctional Amaro clan heads south—one member with love on her mind, the others with murder in their hearts.
“Nearly impossible to put down,” wrote The Cleveland Plain Dealer. “[The book’s] laugh-out-loud wit recall[s] the best of Carl Hiaasen [and] its quirky characters and tough-mindedness are like Elmore Leonard’s.”Mangrove Squeeze
by Laurence Shames
from Ballantine Books
Key West seduces people--then asks them to leave in the morning. Take Aaron Katz. He shucked his nine-to-five to restore Mangrove Arms, a rotting wreck of a guest house. Suki Sperakis sees opportunity in Florida too. In the meantime she's peddling ad space for a third-rate freebie paper. Then she stumbles upon a nefarious plot revolving around a handsome Russian and his string of T-shirt shops. Can't a guy manufacture plutonium in peace?
Now, with the Russian mafia on her trail, freewheeling Suki is running for her life--and right into the safety of Aaron's Mangrove Arms. As dead bodies sully the Key West scenery, a secret society of killers puts the squeeze on Suki and Aaron--and conspires to turn an island paradise into a tropical death-trap. . . .
Sunburn
by Laurence Shames
from Backinprint.com
When Joey Goldman's illegitimate father, a nefarious godfather from New York, heads to Key West, Joey has the bright idea of letting a Kew West reporter help write his memoirs, a book that no one — the Mafia, the FBI, or the real heir to Delgatto's family business — wants to see published.
The Naked Detective
by Laurence Shames
from Backinprint.com
Pete Amsterdam struck it rich through no fault of his own, and he's put his novelistic ambitions aside with his business suits and retired to Key West to live in relative luxury, surrounded by his wine collection and music library. He never considered his PI license as anything but a tax dodge suggested by his accountant. So when a man who's supposedly been dead for two years turns up by the side of Pete's hot tub and asks him to help retrieve the money pouches he buried on a nearby island just before he disappeared, Pete is completely uninterested. But when the man turns up dead again, a beautiful blond yoga teacher who was his best friend convinces Pete to finger the killer and find the treasure--which is how a mild-mannered guy with a taste for the good life gets tangled up with a local mob boss, a gangster who runs a gambling ship, and his dangerous nymphomaniac daughter, ending up in a very funny caper novel that's Laurence Shames's best yet. The pacing ambles a bit, allowing lively digressions on the disparate characters, who end up at the end of the continent and reinvent themselves as regularly as the turning of the tides. This is a welcome addition to the growing shelf of Florida mysteries, and a fuller description of the hero's inner life than Shames has provided in earlier books. --Jane Adams
“One of the new century’s most entertaining mysteries” (The Cleveland Plain Dealer), The Naked Detective introduces us to Pete Amsterdam—a detective so reluctant, he’s never accepted a case … until the inevitable blond shows up. But this is Key West, where nothing is quite what is seems. Is the blonde really a woman? Are the death threats to be believed? Who’s more dangerous—the gangsters or the yoga teacher?
And does Amsterdam—who learned detective work from reading books, just like Don Quixote learned chivalry—have a snowball’s chance in hell of solving this thing before it kills him?Tropical Depression
by Laurence Shames
from Backinprint.com
Key West may very well get its first legal gambling parlor if Murray Zemelman, a.k.a. The Bra King, and his new partner Tommy Tarpon, a local Native American, can pull off their kooky, Prozac-induced plan. When a local mafioso and Key West's most crooked politician decide to get a piece of their action, Murray and Tommy fight for their money and their lives in a battle of wits, writs and anti-depressants.
Mangrove Squeeze
by Laurence Shames
from Hyperion
A mixture of a burnt-out banker, a bugeoning romance and a bunch of Russians, out to make some easy money in Key West, creating an intoxicating new novel that's "as tasty as a mango sundae"
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