COLETTE'S LIST

Brief Reviews Writ Loud
by Colette Bancroft

More Murder Under the Palms

OUR SAMPLING OF TALES OF MURDER and mayhem in the Sunburn State, which began last time with a look at the satisfyingly outrageous novels of Carl Hiaasen, continues...

James W. Hall
Hall hasn't let an academic background (B.A. Eckerd College, M.A. Johns Hopkins, Ph.D. University of Utah) keep him from writing first-rate mysteries. His books are literate and fierce at once, populated with characters deeply scarred by life but still struggling to live ethically in a world that scarcely notices. Southeast Florida locations are the settings for most of his six novels; like many other Florida-based mystery writers, he weaves his environmental concerns into his intricate plots.
Gone Wild. This one begins in the jungles of Borneo, where animal rights activist Allison Farleigh and her two daughters, Sean and Winslow, are participating in an annual count of the island's nearly-extinct orangutans. But the count, and Allison's life, are shattered when Winslow is killed by an assassin's bullet meant for her mother.
The story returns to Hall's usual stomping grounds in Miami as Allison fights to find out who murdered her daughter and why -- and to protect her surviving child, as well as a kidnapped orangutan. Hall's enigmatic Old Florida hardboiled sleuth, Thorn, is on hand to offer help. And Allison will need it to deal with Orlon and Rayon White, a pair of colorfully sociopathic brothers who have been hired to get her -- but by whom? Allison's Everglades hideaway is a poignant slice of the Florida the tourists don't know.

Elmore Leonard
Leonard, the prolific dean of current crime writers, uses a variety of settings for his wry, wise, deviously plotted novels. Some of his best are set in southeast Florida.
Maximum Bob. Judge Bob Isom Gibbs -- Big to his cronies, Maximum Bob to the media -- rules his Palm Beach County courtroom with an iron fist. But this high-powered good old boy is not quite in control at home, where his wife Leanne, a former Weeki Wachee Springs mermaid, spends most of her time meditating over crystals and channeling a 12-year-old slave girl who died in 1855 but still has plenty of advice for Gibbs. Looking for comfort, the horny judge hits on the wrong woman, probation officer Kathy Diaz Baker. She's got her hands full with the Crowe family, a redneck criminal dynasty whose members also happen to have a few bones to pick with the judge. The ten-foot alligator on Gibbs' back porch is just the first move.
Leonard is in wonderful form here, making the most of Southeast Florida's bizarre cultural mix.

Laurence Shames
Shames is a transplanted New Yorker whose love affair with his adopted home, Key West, animates his five lightweight but lively crime novels set there. He neatly captures the Conch Republic's laid-back, small-town-on-hallucinogens atmosphere, populating his books with a gumbo of artists, mobsters, retirees, Cuban immigrants and sleazy politicians whose schemes overlap in interesting and sometimes fatal fashion.
Sunburn. Arty Magnus, city editor of the Key West Sentinel, is the quintessential Key West slacker, pedaling to his dead-end job on an old bike and mooning about the women he hasn't married and the books he hasn't written. Then a beautiful dame and an amazing story both practically fall in his lap -- but either one could get him killed. Arty finds himself in the middle of a struggle for control of the Mafia, caught between a gardening godfather and his ambitious thug of a son.
Can retired wiseguy Bert the Shirt and his ancient chihuahua save the day? Can you get a daquiri on Duval Street?

Randy Wayne White
White, a former journalist and fishing guide, is a longtime resident of the state's southwest coast. That lovely region serves as setting for his novels, and White's affection for and knowledge of its bays and mangroves, its sharks and slackers, are evident in his fiction.
Sanibel Flats. When M.D. "Doc" Ford leaves the U.S. Embassy staff in Massagua (a fictional Central American nation) under perilous circumstances and retires to his home territory in Southwest Florida, he's just looking for a little peace and quiet in which to do his shark research. No such luck. His boyhood friend Rafe Hollins contacts Doc with an urgent appeal for help -- Rafe's young son has been kidnapped in Massagua, and Rafe's own life is in danger. When Doc goes to meet him on an uninhabited island, he finds only Rafe's corpse. Was it suicide or murder? Are the pre-Columbian jade carvings and emeralds Doc finds hidden nearby related to Rafe's death? And, most importantly, where is little Jake Hollins?
Though much of this novel takes place in Central America, where Doc negotiates with guerilla leaders and cynical CIA types to find Jake in time to save him, White does a fine job of evoking Sanibel and environs. White's style can plod at times -- there's such a thing as too much detail -- but the novel gains speed as it goes along.

Charles Willeford
Willeford's death in 1988 was a loss to all of us who love hard-boiled mysteries executed with style and twisted wit. A Miami Herald veteran and South Florida resident, he set many of his 20 novels -- called "profound pulp" by the Village Voice -- in Miami's meanest streets.
Miami Blues. When "blithe psycopath" Freddy "Junior" Frenger first tangles with dogged homicide cop Hoke Moseley, Hoke loses his police ID and his dentures -- not to mention losing face. He sets out to nail Freddy no matter what it takes; given Freddy's fertile criminal imagination, that proves to be a lot. Matters are complicated by Freddy's "platonic marriage" with air-headed hooker Susan Waggoner, who cooks her way into his heart. Willeford's fine eye for the details of Miami's less glamorous environs is evident throughout, as is his deadly deadpan humor. The well-cast 1990 film version of "Miami Blues," starring Alec Baldwin as Freddy, Fred Ward as Hoke and Jennifer Jason Leigh as Susan, is worth watching.

And Then There's John D.
When Travis McGee first tied up his houseboat, the Busted Flush, at Bahia Mar Marina in Fort Lauderdale, the Florida mystery genre was born. Every writer who has followed him into those waters owes something to John D. MacDonald, who created in McGee a classic hard-boiled detective -- a wise-cracking outsider with an unshakeable sense of honor and a heart of gold -- and gave him a Florida twist. MacDonald, through McGee, turned a cynical eye on the state's exploding population and conveyed a deep respect for its natural beauties.
And MacDonald could tell a tale. Where to begin? Just pick a color. MacDonald wrote 21 novels featuring McGee, every one worth a read.

Titles discussed in Colette's List
may be purchased at a discount from The Bookstall.

Colette's Archive

Colette's List 1: Hiaasen: Murder Under The Palms

Colette's List 2: Hall, MacDonald & More Murder

Colette's List 3: Crews: The Artist As Scar Lover

Colette's List 4: Mosley: Easy In The City Of Angels

Colette's List 5: Chandler: Trouble Is My Business

Colette's List 6: Mango, Mortal Sin & Margaritaville

Colette's List 7: A Monstrous Regiment of Women

Colette's List 8: The Inferno: James Ellroy's L.A.

Colette's List 9: Spenser Is Parker, Only Taller

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