Shames, Laurence Books

Florida Straits

Laurence Shames

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The "Sopranos" visit margaritaville.......excellent! 4 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

This is a terrific story that seems to be a unique blend of a Jimmy Buffett "margaritaville" concert and the "Sopranos" family, with a lot of heart thrown in. Laurence Shames takes Joey Goldman,the illegitimate son of a New York wiseguy, and moves him to Key West where he intends to make a new start for himself and his amazing girlfriend Sandra.
After some very comic attempts at cornering the wiseguy market, things take a very different turn and Joey finds himself doing things he never dreamed he would do, both good and bad!
The contrast of fast-paced New York and laid-back Key West lifestyles adds to the fantastic humor of Shames tale.
When Joey Goldman begins to come to terms with the realities of his life, what he wants and what he doesn't, the story begins it's wild ride!

Editorial Review:

In Key West for the summer, New York wiseguy Joey Goldman teams up with his half-brother, Gino--who is on the lam from the mob--and foolishly agrees to be the fall guy in Gino's latest scheme. Reprint. NYT.

Mangrove Squeeze

Laurence Shames

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Laugh Out Loud Funny! 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 8 people found this review helpful.

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!

Editorial Review:

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. . . .

Welcome to Paradise

Laurence Shames

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

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

Scavenger Reef

Laurence Shames

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Shames leaves thugs and enters a world of light 4 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

With Scavenger Reef, Laurence Shames leaves his entertaining crowd of displaced mafia thugs and paints a stunning portrait of a creative life in a real-world (if Kew-West-surreal) context. As a growing fan of the Florida mysteries by Leonard, Hiaasen, Hall, Shames, and others I like to identify what I consider the Key Book by each author, the one you most eagerly recommend. With Leonard it's La Brava. Tourist Season is the Key Book from Carl Hiaasen as is Under Cover of Daylight for James W. Hall. For Laurence Shames I definitely recommend Scavenger Reef. The usual literary portrayal of artists is as hacks, or as painters of alegorical canvases that serve the needs of the novel but which never sound like a painting you'd want to look at. The qualities of Augie Silver's canvases are abstract and radiant, they inform the descriptions of every setting in the book. Within this well-told story of friends and enemies is a startling sense of light and space.

Editorial Review:

Presumed dead after a boating accident, Key West artist Augie Silver suddenly returns, angering the owners of original Augie Silver paintings who were prepared to profit from his demise. By the author of Florida Straits. 30,000 first printing.

The Naked Detective

Laurence Shames

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

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

Virgin Heat

Laurence Shames

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Hilarious mob family muddles through a family crisis 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

How does a slightly dysfunctional mob family from New York deal with the sudden and unexplained disappearance of the adult daughter of the boss?

Fantastic (and almost unbelievable) as the various pieces of this quite entertaining tale might be, they fall into place with hilarious effect, and somehow seem to make perfect sense.

Though this novel is more story than plot, the story is told very well. Characterizations are keenly shaped. The dialogue is strong and carries the story well. Shames has an evocative eye for detail, too.

This book carried me along with sustained and increasing interest, many laughs, and a satisfying climax and denouement that left me with a smile for days.

Editorial Review:

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.

Sunburn

Laurence Shames

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

sort of a man's equivalent to a Stephanie Plum book... 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Janet Evanovich writes an extraordinary successful series of funny crime stories starring Stephanie Plum, the bounty hunter who happens to be a babe. While they should have universal appeal it seems that the publishers target them to women (..guys don't like buying pink covered books). However I can now say I found the male equivalent to Evanovich's novels: Laurence Shames novels. They are also funny, well-written stories with quirky yet likeable characters.

So what does Shames give us with 'Sunburn'? Beyond the formulaic breezy comedic crime novel with a Key West setting he delivers .. shock!.. some rather dramatic and moving stuff (, without taking it all too seriously). We have an aging crime figure who wants to dictate his life story to a sympathetic journalist. Unfortunately both the FBI and others within the Mafia have an unhealthy interest in what is being written, and an especially stupid son makes matters much, much worse. Without divulging spoilers, I simply want to say the author has structured and paced the novel beautifully. The last fifty pages are especially good, exciting.

Bottom line: much better than his introductory 'Florida Straits', 'Sunburn' has made me a fan of Laurence Shames.

Editorial Review:

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.

Tropical Depression

Laurence Shames

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Bra King does It again 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I have currently read Tropical Depression by Laurence Shames.
This book was about a man going through a semi-stage of depression.Murray Zimmelman is going through his second divorce while contemplating suicide.Suddenly he snaps and drives 14 hours non-stop to Key West Florida where he begins a new life.He meets an indian who is fighting for his rights.Murray helps the indian get an island named after his tribe.I would suggest reading this book.

despite laughs this Shames book seems rather indistinct... 3 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Perhaps I'm just unlucky? My first two Laurence Shames novels, 'Florida Straits' and 'Sunburn', are seemingly his best (with 'Sunburn' being especially good). The few others I've read seem hollow in comparison, with 'Tropical Depression' being no exception. Oh, there are some funny moments. But the book falls into the "easy, fun read yet totally forgettable" category.

The story has a neat premise though. A depressed, middle-aged businessman (the "bra king" of New Jersey) moves down to Key West to clear his head. There he meets an equally depressed native American Indian. Both of them get into some (rather silly) business ventures which gets them tangled with the Mafia, and a corrupt state official. The story has sprinkles of Carl Hiaasen, with its "white man has defaced the natural beauty of Florida and its aboriginal inhabitants" messages. Sadly, Laurence Shames doesn't hold a candle to Carl Hiaasen. Weaker prose, laughs without satiric wit ... it all seems too fluffy.

Bottom line: a trifling novel by Shames. Yet it is an easy read. Bring it to the beach.

Editorial Review:

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.