Blue Moon
By John Leslie
Pocket Books, $23
ISBN 0671535145

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Good novels provide settings that are more than ancillary. Distinctive locales become added characters. In Blue Moon, John Leslie's fourth Key West-based Gideon Lowry mystery, a bluesy, island mood pervades. Leslie creates ambiance that blends a wistful, laid-back existence with the hurry-up veneer of a tourist mecca. This transformation -- from ocean breeze-swept outpost to hustling, high-dollar, real estate boomtown -- brings financial pressures and transient visitors and the dangers borne by each.

Private investigator Gideon Lowry is a part-time piano lounge entertainer. He's also a Conch, a Key West native who bemoans his lost days of youth, the funkiness of a carefree, tropical life and regrets losing the love of restaurant owner Gabriella "Gaby" Wade. So when Gaby asks Gideon to do a background check on her new fiance, widower and newcomer Roy Emerson, Lowry approaches the task with mixed emotions.

Lowry has other problems, too. The elderly owners of the mom-and-pop Cuban grocery next to his Duval Street office and apartment are being pressured to sell out. Fred Pacey, a developer with a 20-year history of ignoring tradition in favor of homogenized facades, wants to construct a central shopping mall for tourists. Lowry, too, has received offers. Positioning himself as a stalwart holdout, Gideon advises his neighbors not to sell out. Secretly, he wonders if it isn't time to take the money and abandon the downtown rat race.

Lowry's initial queries into Emerson's lifestyle connect the man with Pacey. Then, late one night, arson destroys the grocery. Gideon has suspicions regarding the tropical terrorism and feels guilt over his bad advice. Soon he is breaking all the rules: working on his own nickel and trying to solve two simultaneous cases that may not exist.

Throughout Blue Moon, Lowry runs on knowledge and instinct, but his feel for the turf, the unique island nuances and politics, mold his judgment and actions. Leslie's version of the false carefree life in the Keys grips the reader and deepens suspense. Gideon may be left standing alone, staring at the cold, blue moon, but readers will appreciate the depth of this fourth book in the Lowry series.

Tom Corcoran is a writer in Florida. His first novel, The Mango Opera, was released by St. Martin's Press in June.