Tropical Depression

by Laurence Shames

Overview

"As enjoyable as a day at the beach." That's how USA TODAY summed up this hilarious and big-hearted romp in the Florida sunshine. When Murray Zemelman, a.k.a. The Bra King, pops another Prozac and heads to the Keys, he has nothing much in mind beyond a quixotic hope of winning back his first wife, Franny, whom he dumped years before. But when he forms an unlikely friendship with Tommy Tarpon, the last remaining member of an obscure Indian tribe, another plan also starts shaping up in his fevered brain. Why not open up Key West's first casino? Why not? Well, how about because the Mafia, in league with some of the nastiest politicians you will ever meet, is determined to kill anyone who tries? Somehow, Murray, Tommy, and Franny didn't think of that until they were in way too deep. Laugh along as they improvise a manic and ever more desperate campaign to keep their casino dreams--and themselves--alive.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781508418566
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	02/14/2015
Series:	Key West Capers , #4
Pages:	292
Sales rank:	584,789
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(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.

Editorial Reviews

"It's hilarious." -- Playboy

Digby Diehl

Candide in Key West, from a rising master of mafia comedy.

Sitting in his suburban New Jersey garage one dismal morning, Murray Zemelman ("the bra king") decides not to kill himself—and instead drives away from his bosomy young second wife and keeps driving till he's at the end of US 1. His escape from the rat race energizes Murray so much that his psychiatrist suggests he imagine his fishing line a ground wire that carries off the excess energy, and Murray dreams blissful dreams of "tiny lightning bolts hissing like matches doused in a shallow sea crammed full of finned and smiling creatures." But everybody's got to do something, and Murray soon takes up the cause of Tommy Tarpon, last of the Matalatchee, who's getting leaned on by mobster Charlie Ponte and his bagman, State Senator Barney LaRue, to front a casino. At the Bra King's urging, Tommy applies to LaRue for tribal ownership of minuscule Kilicumba Island; LaRue, seeing dollars as brilliant as Murray's fish, falls all over himself to expedite the grant; and when Ponte's goons make Tommy an offer he can't refuse for his cooperation in opening a casino on the island, he refuses. Big mistake—for Tommy, for Murray, and for Murray's first wife, Franny Rudin, whom he's avid to rekindle his post-marital romance with, even though she acidly reminds him that in their 21 years together, "the most political thing I ever saw you do was buy stamps." Okay, once the schlemiel hits the fan, there's not much left to watch except the triumph of grit and ingenuity and sunset romance as the purity of the heroes, rather than their virtue, armors them against disaster. But Shames recycles enough characters from his earlier farces (Sunburn, 1995, etc.) to keep his old fans happy and provides enough snappy, joyous patter to snag his share of new ones.

Oh, the people—and the sentences—you'll meet this time.

Kirkus Reviews