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Description
Laurence Shames' funny, elegantly written, and hip thrillers have topped best-seller lists across the country, and earned him a leading role as a writer of "Florida noir" with Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen. When Island Frigate advertising rep Suki Sperakis decides to write an exposE on the Key West black market, she is strangled and left for dead in the trunk of a car sinking slowly into the Gulf of Mexico. Soon her only chance at survival rests on the senile Sam Katz and octogenarian show more ex-mobster Bert the Shirt who must infiltrate the Russian Mafia posing as a gay couple from New York. Will Bert and Sam succeed, or is Suki doomed to once again sleep with the fishes? Richard Ferrone brings every character to life-from the cigar-smoking Island Frigate editor to a man named Pineapple who lives in a fiberglass hotdog-to help make Mangrove Squeeze one of Shames' sharpest, tangiest, and most engaging audiobooks to date. Don't miss these other exciting titles by Laurence Shames: Sunburn, and Florida Straits. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
I really wish I'd never read any book by Laurence Shames because then I would have all of his books and be able to delightfully discover each and every one of them. Two of his characters - Bert the Shirt and Don Giovanni (Bert's chihuahua) are probably my favorite characters in literature. Mangrove Squeeze finds Aaron Katz who's trying to carve out a new life in Key West keeping a bed and breakfast alive. His training on Wall Street isn't serving him too well. Suki Sperakis is selling advertising for a weekly shopper and trying to get her life started. The Russian mafia has made Key West their new home. Everything collides in a wonderful story. Shames tells wonderful stories with wonderful characters and Mangrove Squeeze is one of his best.
I've read several Shames books and all of them have been good and Mangrove Arms is no exception. A good plot with good characters; and even though I like a more terse style of writing, Shames is still able to hold my attention with his more descriptive style of writing. Recommend especially to those who enjoy stories set in Florida/Key West.
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Author Information
32+ Works 2,079 Members
Laurence Shames was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1951, and graduated summa cum laude from NYU, in 1972. He became a journalist, and was published in magazines such as Playboy, Outside, Saturday Review, and Vanity Fair. In 1982, he was named Ethics columnist of Esquire, and also made a contributing editor. In 1991, Shames co- wrote a national show more non-fiction best-seller on the Mafia called Boss of Bosses, with two FBI agents. This success afforded him the opportunity to write fiction full-time, and he has since written ten Key West comic thrillers. He won the CWA Last Laugh Dagger Award for the funniest crime novel of 1995 with Sunburn. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Mangrove Squeeze
- Original publication date
- 1998
- People/Characters
- Aaron Katz; Suki Sperakis
- Important places
- Key West, Florida, USA
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 166
- Popularity
- 196,596
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.55)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 15
- ASINs
- 2
