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Daily Curmudgeon
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S E A R C H
L I T S P A C E
COLETTE'S LIST
Brief Reviews Writ Loud
by Colette Bancroft
Of Mango, Mortal Sin & Margaritaville
Mortal Sin by Paul Levine
Levine's protagonist Jake Lassiter, a pro linebacker turned trial lawyer, is made in the mold of Travis McGee: an iconoclastic wise guy with a heart of gold and a brain that can iron the wrinkles out of a weird situation.Take, for example, the case of Peter Tupton, a well-known environmental activist who goes to a ritzy party one sweltering August day at the home of Nicky Florio, a decidedly shady and highly successful real estate developer. The next morning, Tupton turns up in the Florio wine cellar, frozen to death. Lassiter agrees to defend Nicky in the wrongful death suit that ensues, against his better judgment -- both because Nicky's a slimeball and because Nicky's wife, Gina, happens to be an old flame of Lassiter's.Nicky knows about that part. He doesn't know Gina and Lassiter have resumed their affair, and Lassiter would rather he didn't find out -- especially after he spends an evening with Nicky and some of his more questionable friends that ends with the beheading of Nicky's partner. It seems Nicky found out the partner was sleeping with Gina...That's just for starters. Soon Lassiter is embroiled in Nicky's development schemes, which involve tribal rights to Everglades lands, an enormous gambling casino and more. He's also trying to decipher Gina's motives, which are a lot more complex than they seem.This novel, one of several featuring Lassiter, has a nicely complicated plot, and Lassiter himself is an engaging chap who wrestles with his conscience earnestly but doesn't always win. Aside from a clichéd shoot-out denouement and a wholly unbelievable episode involving rescue by a manatee, Mortal Sin rips right along. Levine is a worthy addition to our "Murder Under the Palms" roster.The Harry Chronicles by Allan Pedrazas
Born and raised in Southern Florida, Pedrazas has a sure sense of the state's unique character that's apparent from the opening pages of this, his first novel. Protagonist Harry Rice is a semi-retired private investigator who runs the Sand Bar, a little Margaritaville on the southeast coast that provides him a living and allows him to be choosy about the cases he pursues.Sometimes, though, as is the way in the world of hard-boiled novels, the cases pursue him, as when a well-dressed stranger walks into the Sand Bar one slow afternoon, announces he's married to Eloise Loftus, gives Harry $50 in "severance pay" and orders him to "stay away from my wife."Problem is, Harry doesn't know Eloise Loftus -- until later that day, when she shows up to hire him to investigate several break-ins at her home and office. Eloise is, as tough detectives say, trouble: all barely-contained sex appeal and elliptical explanations.She's also a friend and colleague of Harry's ex-girlfriend, over whom he's pining seriously. And he's a sucker for an elliptical explanation. So he takes the case, and pretty soon he's looking for a topless dancer named Lola, in whom Wade Loftus has a more than esthetic interest, and then, well, Wade turns up dead in the trunk of Harry's car. Complications ensue.Pedrazas is an economical, witty writer with an eye for telling details and offbeat characters. Harry Rice is a likable old softy, but he also boasts the smarts, intuition and personal moral code every good tough detective should have. And the Sand Bar sounds like a great place for a cold beer on a humid Florida day.The Man Who Invented Florida
by Randy Wayne White
The second installment of "Murder Under the Palms" included a review of White's first novel, Sanibel Flats. This one is his third featuring marine biologist/former government agent Marion "Doc" Ford, and it's a humdinger.White seems much more in control of his material here, weaving a complex, tight tale of kidnapping, development schemes and the possible discovery of the legendary Fountain of Youth, all laced with lots of fascinating Florida history.The plot revolves around Doc Ford's old reprobate of an uncle, Tucker Gatrell, a former cow hunter, fishing guide and teller of tall tales. The way Tuck tells it, he was the man who convinced Harry Truman to make the Everglades a national park, the co-writer of "The Orange Blossom Special," and the uncredited engineer who invented the construction technique used to build the Tamiami Trail -- among other things. Now he's retired to the little town of Mango near the Ten Thousand Islands, just above the 'Glades, and he needs Ford's help for his latest scheme.Tuck raised Ford after his parents died in a boating accident, though they've been estranged since Ford was in high school. Despite his attempts to immerse himself in his research as usual, Ford is drawn into Tuck's web, which has to do with marketing spring water from his property, which the state wants to take over for a park.Evidence of the water's unusual powers includes the regrowth of the testicles of Tuck's horse Roscoe, a former gelding, as well as the rejuvenation of his old pal Joseph Egret, who may just be the last of the Calusa, the fierce tribe native to Florida and thought to have been wiped out a century ago.In addition to the exasperating Tuck, Ford's life is complicated by a romance with Sally Carmel, another Mango native, who was a child when Ford was a high school football hero. Now she's a recently divorced photographer with a sailboat, a mane of copper hair and a long-nursed crush on Ford.Also making appearances are Ford's buddy Tomlinson, the quintessential old hippie, and Henry Short, a character White borrows from Peter Mathiessen's masterful novel Killing Mister Watson, which is set in the same territory some 80 years earlier. As Mathiessen did in that novel, White here uses his profound love for and knowledge about Florida to create a compelling work of fiction soundly based in fact. And The Man Who Invented Florida has one of the most satisfying kickers imaginable at the end. 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
Colette Bancroft, a writer known at various times in her career to date as The Goddess of the Classroom, The Empress of Haute Cuisine and The Spitball Queen, is at work on a mystery novel of her own. She is an editor on the Metro Desk at the St. Petersburg Times.
A Not Entirely Disinterested Service of
Bancroft & Associates: Digital Publishers.
