Bone Island Mambo: An Alex Rutledge Mystery (Alex Rutledge Mysteries) - Hardcover

Corcoran, Tom

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312242816 ISBN 13: 9780312242817

Publisher: Minotaur Books, 2001

Synopsis

A pleasant Key West Sunday in January turns into a tropical nightmare.

It's early. The tourists are still asleep. Freelance and part-time crime photographer Alex Rutledge bicycles near-vacant streets, taking pictures for his own enjoyment. But he's challenged at a restoration district construction site, accused by a developer of snapping photos for an expose.

An hour later, the city police request Rutledge's forensic photo expertise. A murder victim has been found - at the same work site. Detective Dexter Hayes, Jr., is caustic and inept, and Rutledge is dismissed before he completes his work. An hour later, the county sheriff, Chicken Neck Liska, asks Alex to photograph another murder victim, this time on nearby Stock Island.

Rutledge soon suspects that the murders are linked - illogically, through him. He can't divulge the link to his lover, Teresa Barga, for fear of compromising her police media liaison job. Alex questions the detective's blundering, while the cops begin to link him to the crimes. A powerful real estate broker offers Rutledge an odd, lucrative job. Friends are threatened. He and Teresa dodge gunshots. Yet there is no identifiable antagonist, no motive, no reason for Rutledge to be a hub for evil. To protect himself and his friends, to avoid arrest - unsuccessfully, at first - he must scratch for information on an island where few tell the truth.

At the core of Bone Island Mambo is betrayal, retribution, and revenge. The plot twists in surprising directions, and Corcoran's characters are true characters, never as laid-back as they first appear. Visit Key West, and hang on for dear life.

About this title

About the Author

Tom Corcoran has been a bartender, disc jockey, screenwriter, Navy officer and journalist. He co-wrote the Buffett hits "Fins" and "Cuban Crimes of Passion." He is the author of Gumbo Limbo, Bone Island Mambo, and other Alex Rutledge mysteries. He lives in the Lower Keys, Florida.

Reviews

Key West crime scene photographer Alex Rutledge (The Mango Opera; Gumbo Limbo) returns for his third fast-paced adventure. Someone is recreating a number of bizarre murders dressing victims in drag, making off with heads and our hero is tapped as a main suspect. In clearing his name, Rutledge leads a fine tour of the area, from the Green Parrot bar to fishing flats in the mangrove forests. The best aspect of this novel is summed up in the line, "Key West used to be a quaint drinking village with a fishing problem." Corcoran captures this local atmosphere extremely well he clearly knows the turf (his photographs have appeared on several recordings by Key West mainstay Jimmy Buffett). But the style he uses to make this novel exciting invests every action with the same weight, from opening a beer ("I took the bottle, twisted the cap, spun it into the trash") to Rutledge being chased in his Shelby Mustang by gun-wielding assassins. Corcoran often seems almost postmodern, sitting outside his narrative and noting, "Instead for want of an action word they had messed with us." Or, regarding the convoluted and not very believable solution to the mystery: "`You missed your calling,' I said. `All these cable networks are looking for script writers.' " Sure to please fans of the series and folks who enjoy lightweight Florida crime novels.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

This third Alex Rutledge novel again finds the Key West crime photographer trying to figure out why the people around him keep getting murdered. This time it all starts on a Sunday morning bike ride when Rutledge is assaulted by a couple of local thugs who fear he's about to discover a corpse stashed nearby. The corpses keep turning up, and Rutledge--as happened in The Mango Opera (1998) and Gumbo Limbo (1999)--can't help but notice that he seems to be at the center of the carnage. The trail leads him to an elaborate real-estate scam involving one of Key West's oldest families. Like John Leslie's Gideon Lowry novels, the Rutledge series offers mainstream mystery fare, shorn of the surrealism and black comedy that dominate so much South Florida crime fiction. Corcoran has a real feel for the laissez-faire Key West style, and he knows how to meld island history into his stories. The plotting is nothing special, and some of the secondary characters drift toward types, but the mellow mood guarantees a good time. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Minotaur Books
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312242816
• ISBN 13: 9780312242817
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288