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. . . .
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Mixing crime and comedy in Key West into fluffy confections has worked well for Shames, but his latest (after Virgin Heat) falls a little flat. Maybe it's because the ingredients are so familiar: a spunky young woman who sells ads for a local handout but yearns to break a big story; an earnest ex-Wall Streeter who runs a struggling guest house; a gaggle of Russian mobsters skimming American cream at the ocean's edge. Toss in a pair of philosophical drifters living in an abandoned giant hot dog and a couple of old men in various stages of eccentricity and you've got a book with a terminal case of the cutes. There are bright moments: when Mangrove Arms owner Aaron Katz wakes at 5 a.m. "because the woman who was supposed to do the breakfast called to say her tattoo had started bleeding underneath her skin and she couldn't work that day." Or when Aaron's half-batty father overhears some Russian-speakers in a Key West bar and is transported back to his East European youth. Or when Suki Sperakis, New Jersey's gift to Key West journalism, tries to convince a local cop to call in the FBI after she has been strangled and left for dead by a Russian who runs a chain of T-shirt shops ("The FBI? Suki, jampacked 747s are falling from the sky, large public buildings are being blown off their foundations, small wars are being fought against skinhead lunatics in Idaho and Texas, and I'm supposed to call the FBI because you don't like the T-shirt shops?"). Sad to say, it would take many more such moments to make this light, trite souffle stand. $250,000 ad/promo; special promotion in which 10 booksellers will win a trip to Key West. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Library Journal
The Russian mafia is alive and well in Key West, operating a string of T-shirt shops as a cover for their more nefarious activities. Selling advertising space for the local newspaper, Suki Sperakis meets Lazslo Kalynin, who in a fit of lust reveals too much about the real business he and his Russian cohorts are conducting. Because Suki knows too much, Lazslo is ordered to kill her. On the other side of town, Suki has met Aaron Katz, a former New Yorker renovating a guest house while taking care of his aging father. Meanwhile, Sam Katz has been befriended by Bert d'Ambrosia and his ancient chihuahua, Don Giovanni. The action takes off when the beaten, choked Suki is found in the trunk of Lazslo's car. Shames (Sunburn, LJ 1/95) has included his signature cast of geriatric zanies and organized-crime types doing what they do best?causing mayhem and hilarity in the seemingly calm, sun-drenched streets of Florida. Although often compared to Carl Hiaasen, Shames has a style all his own and the ability to create recognizable and sympathetic characters. Another winner for all public libraries.?Jo Ann Vicarel, Cleveland Heights-University Heights P.L., Ohio Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Laurence Shames has been a New York City taxi driver, lounge singer, furniture mover, lifeguard, dishwasher, gym teacher, and shoe salesman. Having failed to distinguish himself in any of those professions, he turned to writing full-time in 1976 and has not done an honest day's work since.
His basic laziness notwithstanding, Shames has published twenty books and hundreds of magazine articles and essays. Best known for his critically acclaimed series of eight Key West novels, he has also authored non-fiction and enjoyed considerable though largely secret success as a collaborator and ghostwriter. Shames has penned four New York Times bestsellers. These have appeared on four different lists, under four different names, none of them his own. This might be a record.
Born in Newark, New Jersey in 1951, to chain-smoking parents of modest means but flamboyant emotions, Shames did not know Philip Roth, Paul Simon, Queen Latifa, Shaquille O'Neal, or any of the other really cool people who have come from his hometown. He graduated summa cum laude from NYU in 1972 and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. As a side note, both his alma mater and honorary society have been extraordinarily adept at tracking his many address changes through the decades, in spite of the fact that he's never sent them one red cent, and never will.
It was on an Italian beach in the summer of 1970 that Shames first heard the sacred call of the writer's vocation. Lonely and poor, hungry and thirsty, he'd wandered into a seaside trattoria, where he noticed a couple tucking into a big platter of fritto misto. The man was nothing much to look at but the woman was really beautiful. She was perfectly tan and had a very fine-gauge gold chain looped around her bare tummy. The couple was sharing a liter of white wine; condensation beaded the carafe. Eye contact was made; the couple turned out to be Americans. The man wiped olive oil from his rather sensual lips and introduced himself as a writer. Shames knew in that moment that he would be one too.
He began writing stories and longer things he thought of as novels. He couldn't sell them.
By 1979 he'd somehow become a journalist and was soon publishing in top-shelf magazines like Playboy, Outside, Saturday Review, and Vanity Fair. (This transition entailed some lucky breaks, but is not as vivid a tale as the fritto misto bit, so we'll just sort of gloss over it.) In 1982, Shames was named Ethics columnist of Esquire, and also made a contributing editor to that magazine.
By 1986 he was writing non-fiction books. The critical, if not the commercial, success of these first established Shames' credentials as a collaborator/ghostwriter. His 1991 national bestseller, Boss of Bosses, written with two FBI agents, got him thinking about the Mafia. It also bought him a ticket out of New York and a sweet little house in Key West, where he finally got back to Plan A: writing novels. Given his then-current preoccupations, the novels naturally featured palm trees, high humidity, dogs in sunglasses, and New York mobsters blundering through a town where people were too laid back to be afraid of them. But this part of the story is best told with reference to the books themselves, so please stick around and explore them.
I had really liked Florida Straights, so I decided to give this one a try. And I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard! I kept waking my girlfriend up I was laughing so hard in bed! This book has the kind of wry sense of humor that is so hard to find. It also has sweet, likeable characters. And Shames has left out a lot of the violent nastiness a lot of other writers in this genre go so heavy on! I can't wait for my next trip literary trip to Key West!
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'Mangrove Squeeze' is my third Laurence Shames novel (after 'Florida Straits' and 'Sunburn') and is easily the worst of the bunch. Yes, it has the same south Florida setting and similarly quirky characters. But the plot fails to ignite, and the laughs are comparatively few.
In 'Mangrove Squeeze' we have big crime by the Russian mafia in small town Key West. A nosey do-gooder from the local weekly newspaper gets herself in trouble with these guys, gets her boyfriend caught in the middle of it, and ... so the story goes. As a previous reviewer has noted, 'Mangrove Squeeze' does pass the time rather nicely. But otherwise it is forgettable in every way.
Bottom line: useful beach-reading material. But you won't want to keep it on your bookshelf.
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This is possibly the funniest book I have read in a while and I really appreciate when an author makes me laugh. The characters are priceless. Fred & Pineapple who live in a fiberglass hot dog on the outskirts of Key West, the Russian mafia with their mispronunciations that had me in stitches, the old geezers Sam & Bert with his "moribund chihuahua." The book was published over a decade ago, but it still captures the essence of Key West and the crazies who live there. The plot is good even though it is a bit far-fetched. The story takes a more sinister turn at the end, which jarred a bit with the overall tone but, hey, 5 stars for witty dialogue and hilarious images of the afore-mentioned characters.
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