[Key West 06] • Mangrove Squeeze

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. . . .

From Publishers WeeklyMixing 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.

From Library JournalDavid Hunter's reading and character accents add to the atmosphere of this amusing tale of Key West. Aaron Katz moved from New York City to Key West with his father to refurbish and run a bed-and-breakfast. Suki Serakis's latest job is selling ad space in the Island Frigate, but she's weary of the job and of the attention of Lazlo Kalyanin, a Russian immigrant who fancies himself a playboy. Add to the mix organized crime, two men who live in a hot-dog stand, kitschy T-shirt shops, dead bodies, and bombs and the result is an entertaining mix of quirky characters in an amusing mystery. Recommended for popular fiction collections.?Denise A. Garofalo, Mid-Hudson Lib. Sys., Poughkeepsie, NYCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.