Description:

Amazon.com Review

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

From Publishers Weekly

Shames's eighth Key West novel (after Welcome to Paradise) has its moments of charm and interest, especially when narrator Pete Amsterdam, debuting here, describes the particular pleasures of the setting: "Key West is a place to withdraw to, a retreat without apology or shame. And you learn things from the place you live. One of the things Key West teaches is that disappointment and contentment can go together more easily than you would probably imagine." Pete has learned this lesson well, as a man both disappointed (by his lack of success, especially with women) and contented (with his cozy house and the freedom to indulge his three main interests--wine, music and tennis--without actually working). Unfortunately, his accountant has talked Pete into getting a PI's license for tax reasons, and that's where the trouble begins--for Pete as well as for the novel. Shames does provide a few original touches--for example, the well-built blonde who arrives early on to hire Peter (and catches him naked in the hot tub) and who turns out to be a cross-dressing man. But the plot quickly bogs down into a routine search for two missing mail pouches buried on a spit of sand, sought after by not only Pete and his soon-to-be-late client but also by the usual assortment of local thugs and corrupt cops. Too bad. Amsterdam and his main squeeze, a lithe yoga instructor named Maggie, deserve better next time out. Author tour. (June)
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