Buy or borrow this book! Support your local independent bookseller
Find it in a WorldCat library
Compare prices at major online bookstores
|
![[Tropical Depression]]( ../images/tropicaldepression.gif)
|
|
Murray Zemelman, a suicidal garment executive from Short Hills, New Jersey, drives away from a garage full of carbon monoxide and wakes up the next day in Key West. In choosing palm trees over a more uncertain reward, Zemelman has driven 1,500 miles and arrived to a new state of mind. Murray isn't sure he's happier, but his Prozac mindset allows him to reject his young second wife and workaholic past and to accept an existence where his biggest concern is the humidity.
Author Laurence Shames has made Murray a human definition of Tropical Depression. But unlike many Keys residents, Murray wants to be normal. He sets out to regain two things: his sanity and the affections of his first wife, Franny, whom he left during an earlier stage of midlife turmoil.
Zemelman begins to acclimate himself to island life. Yet his awkward innocence blinds him to the fact that South Florida is a crazy stew, and Key West is where it boils over. A chance meeting with Tommy Tarpon, the embittered and last living member of his Native Florida tribe, offers a shaky first step into the cauldron.
A classic victim of the system, Tommy is stoically resigned to poverty. After he allows Zemelman to chip through his wall of defensive unfriendliness, the amigos learn that State Senator Barney LaRue wants to pressure Tommy into being a front man for a casino operation. The gambling--legal on the remote Keys island where Tommy Tarpon's ancestors are buried--would be run by LaRue's underworld associates from Miami.
Zemelman smells a deal in the salt sea air and talks Tommy into a partnership. Better to do something against your principles in partnership with a friend, he reasons, than with someone you despise. As Zemelman and Tarpon conspire to outwit the politician and the mob, they stumble into discovery, disaster, and the mud of sacred tribal turf.
Tropical Depression is Laurence Shames's fourth Florida-based comic thriller. Once again Shames demonstrates his knowledge of the territory and his ability to create outrageous but sustainable characters. He understands how people and situations that might be over the top elsewhere are wholly believable in Key West. With effective dialogue and dialect, the perfect amount of local color, and a plot that flows like the Gulf Stream, Shames has staked out his own definition of the tropical comic genre.
The storm warnings are up. Tropical Depression triggers a maelstrom of greed and a collision of cultures. Once again Laurence Shames has delivered a winner. Batten down the hatches.
Tom Corcoran is a writer and photographer in Lakeland, Florida.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.