Thus are we introduced to Pete Amsterdam, the world's most reluctant sleuth and the improbable but totally engaging protagonist of this wry and irresistible novel.
Naked in his hot tub, Pete is idly reviewing his morning tennis game when trouble arrives in the form of the inevitable blonde. This being Key West, the blonde is not quite what she seems, and it's useless to explain to her that he's not a real detective--that, in fact, he got his P.I. license strictly as a tax dodge, a way to pretend his new wine cellar is an "office." She's got troubles of her own--big troubles that are utterly foreign to the cozy little paradise Pete has crafted for himself.
Why, then, does the unwilling gumshoe allow himself to be squeezed ever tighter against Key West's humid underbelly--involved with the likes of local bully Lefty Ortega, his nympho daughter, and the sleazeball who controls the island's gambling boats? And why does he feel that his life is being taken over by the demands and traditions of the detective story?
Will Pete blunder his way through to solving the crime? Will he penetrate the leotard of the lissome yoga teacher who is his only ally? The answers will be found in these fast-moving and hilarious pages, where the hard-boiled flirts with the postmodern. Think of this novel as Raymond Chandler meets Woody Allen meets the Coen brothers, and as a romp that somehow breaks through to serious consideration of the themes of community and responsibility, and the notion that maybe all of us could be heroes--even if mostly in spite of ourselves.
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
From Publishers Weekly
Shames's eighth Key West novel (after Welcome to Paradise) has its moments of charm and interest, especially when narrator Pete Amsterdam, debuting here, describes the particular pleasures of the setting: "Key West is a place to withdraw to, a retreat without apology or shame. And you learn things from the place you live. One of the things Key West teaches is that disappointment and contentment can go together more easily than you would probably imagine." Pete has learned this lesson well, as a man both disappointed (by his lack of success, especially with women) and contented (with his cozy house and the freedom to indulge his three main interests--wine, music and tennis--without actually working). Unfortunately, his accountant has talked Pete into getting a PI's license for tax reasons, and that's where the trouble begins--for Pete as well as for the novel. Shames does provide a few original touches--for example, the well-built blonde who arrives early on to hire Peter (and catches him naked in the hot tub) and who turns out to be a cross-dressing man. But the plot quickly bogs down into a routine search for two missing mail pouches buried on a spit of sand, sought after by not only Pete and his soon-to-be-late client but also by the usual assortment of local thugs and corrupt cops. Too bad. Amsterdam and his main squeeze, a lithe yoga instructor named Maggie, deserve better next time out. Author tour. (June) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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.
This review is from: The Naked Detective (Hardcover)
when i heard laurence shames had a new book out- i made haste to get it. I had read all of his previous books and loved them for their quick diologue and original and diverse characters. i assumed Naked Detective would have more of the same- and discovered it had none of that- the entire book has about 4 characters- and with the exception of a cap driver/tennis bum- all are totally bland and forgetable. It seems like mr shames rushed this one off the fullfill a publishing contract- it is a very very slow moving book- with main characters who are wooden and artificial- it is hard to believe that the same man who created "bert the shirt" could paint in such tiresome colors. I sincerely pray this will be the only shames book with pete amsterdam- but like another Lawrence- Sanders- i fear once an auther has sucess- and an easy tiresome formula- IE- the McNally books- they never are able to recapture their past glory- To me this book is a cop-out- a quickie which tricks mr shames loyal readers into thinking they are in store for more of the wonderful same- yet to get though this book is a real trial..it is that boring and humdrum
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This review is from: The Naked Detective (Hardcover)
At about the time of its publication I perused a copy of Florida Straits, Laurence Shames first novel, and was struck by the author's vivid description of garbage accumulating on a New York City street corner. I read the book and became a fan. Mine is the perspective of one who has read each of Laurence Shames' novels in the order by which they were written. All of them are very good, but some are better than others. The Naked Detective is some of Shames best writing yet.
The formula for the author's eighth novel is familiar Shames: colorful Key West denizens reluctantly or unwittingly drawn into a zany plot involving farcical criminal capers, with overtures of lust and ever present danger. This book -- as the others -- are simply fun to read. This plot is slightly less farcical than we have come to expect, but the prose, as always, is wonderfully refreshing.
The Naked Detective is somewhat novel for its style, it is the first book Shames has written in the first person, but it showcases his splendid writing skills wonderfully. Shames' descriptive techniques are superlative; spirited dialogues come alive with vibrant descriptions of body gestures, posture and (his specialty) hand movements. And of course there is the ever present artfully drawn tapestry of Key West.
A slight disappointment is that there are no cameo appearances by now familiar characters, such as Joey Goldman or Burt the Shirt, nor are any ailing pets woven into the story line (I hope the chihuahua is still alive), but several new characters are introduced and fans can only hope that one day they will all meet at a Key West sunset cocktail party in a forthcoming Shames story.
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This review is from: The Naked Detective (Hardcover)
Although I read voraciously (154 books this year so far) and check out Amazon's editorial and customer reviews on an almost daily basis, this is the first time I've been motivated to write a review. This is the most disappointing book I've read in years, most likely because I was excited about a new book by Shames. His early works are among my favorites, with offbeat characters and laugh-out-loud moments. I hate to kick an author when he's down but, sad to say, this one's as dead as the rodents Pete Amsterdam finds in his hot tub. Skip this, and read his other books.
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