The Mango Opera

Part-time Key West crime-site photographer Alex Rutledge is awakened by his estranged girlfriend in the middle of the night and is even more startled when she announces her new roommate, to whom she bears a striking resemblance, has been murdered.

Southern Florida keeps turning out mystery writers. Corcoran's colorful Key West debut shows that there's room for at least one more. Alex Rutledge, longtime Key West resident, earns a precarious living as a photographer whose work includes some crime-site picture taking for the police. Rutledge's laid-back routine is disrupted when estranged girlfriend Annie Minnette shows up with some hastily gathered belongings after her roommate has been found murdered. Rutledge's involvement becomes more direct when additional murders and attempted murders occurAall aimed at women who are part of his somewhat promiscuous past. Rutledge's familiarity with the victims seems to be at the center of a mystery as snarled as a mangrove clump. Untangling the twists proves dangerous and exacting as a parade of memorable characters send Rutledge on a trip down memory lane that includes flashbacks to the Cuban boatlift and dubious characters on both sides of the law. With its sure feel for the Key West that resides beneath the tourist facade and a quirky, hard-edged rhythm pulsing beneath the surface calm, this debut deserves a wide and welcoming audience.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Even though he's AIDS-free, sex with Key West photographer Alex Rutledge can be hazardous to your health. One of his former lovers has barely escaped a carjacking attempt, and two others are dead. Annie Minette, who broke off a three-year relationship with Alex less than a month ago, is back on his doorstep because her roommate, Public Defender Ellen Albury, has also been murdered, to all appearances by the same man. The local cops are too polite to identify that man as Alex--after all, they know him from the crime-scene photos he's often snapped for them--but he thinks it might be a good idea to run down the killer anyway, before he gets run down himself (a distinct possibility), or before Annie, who may well have been the intended victim instead of look-alike Ellen, ends up in the morgue. Alex can't help worrying that the killings are tied to a trip he made 20 years ago to photograph a Marielito rescue, and of course he's right. But with so many ladies dead or under attack, there's plenty of suspicion to go around among charter skipper Sam Wheeler, senior investigator Avery Hatch, and former political prisoner Raoul Balbuena, whose credentials as local hero and father of one of the victims don't keep him from looking even guiltier than Alex. So many suspects turn out to be guilty, in fact, that you may wonder why the feds don't just cut the island loose and set it adrift. But then you'd lose the evocative locations that are this first novel's biggest plus. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.