Welcome to Paradise - Softcover

Shames, Laurence

4.06

1,008 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345432185 ISBN 13: 9780345432186

Publisher: Fawcett, 2000

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Before mild-mannered furniture salesman Al Tuschman left New Jersey for a week in Key West, he hadn't an enemy in the world. But a series of puzzling assaults on his privacy, his sanity, and his life has turned his stay at the tasteful Paradise Hotel into Tropical Hell. Maybe it's the humidity. Maybe the Sambuca. Or maybe it's the nickname emblazoned on his license plate: Big Al.

For Big Al Marracotta, Mafia capo, a Florida getaway means outrunning a career in crime and rancid calamari. For Katy Sansone it's a bid for sunshine and self-respect--until a case of mistaken identity pits the confused woman against a bafflement of Als and more danger than any one of them had reason to pack for. Now, if Tuschman doesn't watch his back, somebody's going to be reporting the death of another salesman. . . .

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Review:

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

From the Back Cover:

PRAISE FOR LAURENCE SHAMES

Mangrove Squeeze
"Like [Elmore] Leonard, Shames mixes comedy and crime expertly. . . . A delightfully offbeat crime comedy, Florida style." --Bill Ott, Booklist

"Critics have compared [Shames] to the great crime absurdist Carl Hiaasen, but he's not only treading on the master's heels; in plot, invention, and sheer vigour he's overtaken him."
--Literary Review (London)

Virgin Heat
"Nearly impossible to put down. Its Key West setting and laugh-out-loud wit recall the best of Carl Hiaasen. Its quirky characters and tough-mindedness are like Elmore Leonard's."
--Les Roberts, Cleveland Plain Dealer

"[T]his slapstick caper, a gravity-defying structure of impossible coincidences, has been built for fun. . . . And even his zaniest characters have a dark core that gives them dimension in this sun-bleached land of forgetting." --Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review

Tropical Depression
"Like Charles Willeford, Elmore Leonard, and Carl Hiaasen, Laurence Shames is a specialist in tales of low-and-high jinks in humid places." --Bill Wallace, San Francisco Chronicle

Sunburn
"From the first page to the last, Sunburn charms." --Felicia Gressette, The Miami Herald

Scavenger Reef
"[A] mix of hilarity and menace saturated with a physical sense of Key West . . . Superior entertainment." --Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times

Florida Straits
"Mr. Shames turns out characters flashier than a Key West sunset and dialogue tastier than a conch stew." --The New York Times Book Review

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