Florida Straits

by Laurence Shames

Overview

"People go to Key West for lots of different reasons. Joey Goldman went there to become a gangster..." So begins this classic Key West caper, the hilarious and touching book that launched a much-loved series and introduced the world to Bert the Shirt and his chihuahua Don Giovanni, two of the most unforgettable characters in contemporary fiction. Joey, the illegitimate son of a major NY mafioso, decides to break away from a decidedly unpromising future in the old neighborhood of Queens. But will the old neighborhood and the Family let him go in peace? Not if knucklehead half-brother Gino has anything to say about it. As Joey is finally establishing his new life in sunny Florida, Gino involves him in a disastrous scam featuring a boatload of stolen emeralds and several squads of very nasty thugs. Finding within himself resources of smarts and courage he never knew he had, Joey beats long odds and muddles through to a brilliant solution to the problems dumped on him by Gino. Cleverly plotted, enlivened by pitch-perfect dialogue, FLORIDA STRAITS is a completely satisfying mystery, but it's more than that as well. Think of it as a fish-out-of-water coming-of-age novel, a comedy of very bad manners with an unlikely hero you will root for from page one.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781508405054
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	02/12/2015
Series:	Key West Capers , #1
Pages:	306
Sales rank:	454,615
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Laurence Shames has been a New York City taxi driver, lounge singer, furniture mover, lifeguard, dishwasher, gym teacher, and shoe salesman. Having failed to distinguish himself in any of those professions, he turned to writing full-time in 1976 and has not done an honest day's work since. His basic laziness notwithstanding, Shames has published more than twenty books and hundreds of magazine articles and essays. Best known for his critically acclaimed series of Key West novels, he has also authored non-fiction and enjoyed considerable though largely secret success as a collaborator and ghostwriter. Shames has penned four New York Times bestsellers. These have appeared on four different lists, under four different names, none of them his own. This might be a record. Born in Newark, New Jersey in 1951, to chain-smoking parents of modest means but flamboyant emotions, Shames graduated summa cum laude from NYU in 1972 and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. Shortly after finishing college, he began annoying editors by sending them short stories they hated. He also wrote longer things he thought of as novels. He couldn't sell them. By 1979 he'd somehow passed himself off as a journalist and was publishing in top-shelf magazines like Playboy, Outside, Saturday Review, and Vanity Fair. In 1982, Shames was named Ethics columnist of Esquire, and also made a contributing editor to that magazine. By 1986 he was writing non-fiction books whose critical if not commercial success first established his credentials as a collaborator/ghostwriter. His 1991 national bestseller, BOSS OF BOSSES, written with two FBI agents, got him thinking about the Mafia. It also bought him a ticket out of New York and a sweet little house in Key West, where he finally got back to Plan A: writing fiction. Given his then-current preoccupations, the novels--beginning with FLORIDA STRAITS--naturally featured palm trees, high humidity, dogs in sunglasses, and blundering New York mobsters. Having had the good fortune to find a setting he loved and a wonderfully loyal readership as well, Shames wrote eight Key West novels during the 1990s, before taking a decade-long detour into screenwriting and collaborative work. In 2013, he returned to his favorite fictional turf with SHOT ON LOCATION--a suspenseful and hilarious mix of Hollywood glitz and Florida funky. TROPICAL SWAP, Shames' tenth Key West novel, tells the riotous tale of a home exchange that sounds too good to be true, and is.

What People are Saying About This

Tony Hellerman

"Florida Straits is fresh, new and different. You don't want to miss it. James Shames can write!"

Tony Hillerman

"Once every few years a really talented new novelist enters the mytery scene. This year it's Laurence Shames. 'Florida Straits' is fresh, new and different. You don't want to miss it. Shames can write!"

Peter Maas

"I can't remember when I've had more laughs at the Mafia's expense. The funniest part is that 'Florida Straits' for all its zaniness provides a true picture of mob life and all the recent spate of as-told-to expose books put together."

Editorial Reviews

A comedy of Mafia manners as brash and shiny as a sharkskin suit struts its way across these pages. Young mafioso Joey Goldman, the illegitimate son of a New York don, gets fed up with his lot as a goombata gofer and takes his bank-teller girfriend Sandra to Key West, where he's ``gonna, like, take over.'' Sandra lands a new job right away, but Joey is stymied by his first foray out of New York mob territory. Rebuffed by the seamiest of local racketeers, Joey is counseled by retired gunsel Bert ``the Shirt'' to go native; he falls in love with laid-back Key West, where ``the air is the temperature of lips,'' and takes a job pitching time-shares. All is well until big brother Gino drops in from New York--up to his size-17 neck in trouble with the Miami mob over uncut emeralds and misplaced drugs. Joey's former troubles are back in his face as Gino sets him up; death looms before Joey finally outscams the pros to become a self-made man. The plot line flows like a strong ocean current, and Shames's ( The Big Time ) quirky Key West denizens clash wonderfully with the insulated and seamy lives of the mobsters. Film rights to Lee Rich Productions. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The author of The Hunger for More: Searching for Values in an Age of Greed (Times Bks., 1989) proves that fiction is not his forte in this tale of Joey Goldman, the neglected illegitimate son of a New York Mafia don and a Jewish manicurist who drives to Key West with plans to establish his own criminal fiefdom. Joey substantiates his reputation as a loser by assaying a number of rackets that Cubans, Colombians, and another Mafia family have already cornered. With funds running low, he takes a ``legal'' job as a barker-shill for a condominium development, but his past soon intrudes in the form of his half-brother, Gino Delgato, who engineered a bungled heist of emeralds from the rival Ponte family. Again involved in the brutal give-and-take of gang hegemony, Joey must take steps to save his brother's life as well as his own. The abundance of four-letter words is no substitute for purposeful dialog, and protagonist Joey is so sordidly pathetic, conventional, and slow-witted, that, by comparison, Paddy Chayefsky's Marty is a hero of Homeric proportions.--Edward Cline, Palo Alto, Cal.

Library Journal