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Shames Laurence

Virgin Heat

SKLA

List Price: $2.99

Description

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.
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.
Welcome to Paradise

Backinprint.com

List Price: $14.95
Price: $12.51
You Save: $2.44 (16%)

Description

What’s in a license plate? Plenty, if the tag reads BIG AL.

In this “wickedly inventive” (Los Angeles Times) and “darkly comic tale” (People), mild mannered Al Tuschman, a salesman from New Jersey, is mistaken for Al Marracotta, a major New York mobster with some very nasty enemies—enemies who hire a pair of bumbling hitmen to turn the paradise of Big Al’s Key West vacation into a living hell. When the wrong Big Al is targeted, cries of Why me? fill the tropical night—and the gentle Tuschman must turn tougher than his namesake to save his own life.


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


Sunburn

iUniverse

List Price: $21.95
Price: $11.64
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Description

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 onethe Mafia, the FBI, or the real heir to Delgatto's family businesswants to see published.
Tropical Depression

iUniverse

List Price: $20.95
Price: $18.79
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Description

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.
Mangrove Squeeze

SKLA

List Price: $2.99

Description

People go to Key West for lots of different reasons. Not all of them are legal, sane, or in the interest of public safety.

Suki Sperakis went to Key West for a better life—even though the tradeoff was a series of lousy jobs, the latest of which is selling ad space for a third-rate freebie paper.

Aaron Katz went to Key West to escape the double hell of a Wall Street job and a soured marriage. And to pursue a dream of restoring a doomed and rotting wreck of a guest house.

Then there were the Russians…THEY came to Key West for the opportunity. Blue jeans! Gold chains! Harley-Davidsons! And a cozy, unprotected spot that harbored the richest, most explosive stash of contraband they could possibly imagine.

When Suki starts sniffing around a story that could really make a difference to the town she loves, and Aaron falls for her as the blithe spirit who could turn his life around, and Aaron's senile father joins forces with retired mafioso Bert the Shirt, and the Russians start to worry that too many nosy Americans are sniffing around... that's when MANGROVE SQUEEZE takes off!
People go to Key West for lots of different reasons. Not all of them are legal, sane, or in the interest of public safety.

Suki Sperakis went to Key West for a better life—even though the tradeoff was a series of lousy jobs, the latest of which is selling ad space for a third-rate freebie paper.

Aaron Katz went to Key West to escape the double hell of a Wall Street job and a soured marriage. And to pursue a dream of restoring a doomed and rotting wreck of a guest house.

Then there were the Russians…THEY came to Key West for the opportunity. Blue jeans! Gold chains! Harley-Davidsons! And a cozy, unprotected spot that harbored the richest, most explosive stash of contraband they could possibly imagine.

When Suki starts sniffing around a story that could really make a difference to the town she loves, and Aaron falls for her as the blithe spirit who could turn his life around, and Aaron's senile father joins forces with retired mafioso Bert the Shirt, and the Russians start to worry that too many nosy Americans are sniffing around... that's when MANGROVE SQUEEZE takes off!
The Naked Detective

Backinprint.com

List Price: $14.95
Price: $11.64
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Description

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

Shames Laurence News




Family Values? - Lawrence Journal World
Family Values?He has been arrested before (as a teenager) and has spent a few nights in jail due to DWI. Now his son shames him a bit - the case appeared in the local press with no names - and he gets kicked out of the house? To me this sounds completely absurd.