Bananaville - Hardcover

Lilliefors, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312145489 ISBN 13: 9780312145484

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1996

Synopsis

On the coast of Florida rests a town where warm mists linger over the morning and the squawks of pelicans can be heard. To all appearances, Bananaville was a peaceful town, until Rudolph Reed, an honest man with a flare for change, is found murdered on the beach.
Bananaville probably would have gone on its way, ignoring what lay beneath the facade of tranquility, until Martin Grant, a well-meaning journalist long since looking for his "Big Story," strolls into town. What he learns as he begins to settle into Bananaville is that the cool breeze that moves through the streets smelling of jasmine may not be so nice. The townspeople, from local land developer to pizza shop owner, have much to hide, and are willing to go to great lengths, including violence, to do so.

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Reviews

Rudolph Reed was wasted in Bananaville?murdered on the tiny Florida town's lush beach during his early morning jog. None of his fellow town council members, however, seem inclined to find the culprit in this stylized, atmospheric tale of power and corruption. It's not until local newspaper publisher, seersucker-clad Peter Fudd, lures 40-year-old investigative journalist Martin Grant from Iowa that the town's dark side comes to light. Martin, a soggily earnest recovering alcoholic with a sputtering marriage, hopes Reed's death is the big story he's been seeking to jump start his career. He discovers there are plenty of reasons some in town might want to see Reed dead?and nearly all are tied to the fact that Bananaville is ripe for development, which the charismatic Reed and his followers, the "Reed-jects," vehemently oppose. Driven as much by his growing admiration for Reed as by his own ambitions, Martin risks everything to unravel the tangled threads of the crime?and knows he's come close when the house he's renting explodes. The story's outcome is predictable and Lilliefors has some annoying tics?such as introducing and discarding characters to advance his plot and describing everyone's clothes as if shirts were the windows to the soul. But the sum seems to be greater than its parts in this refreshing debut that has the moral compass and characters of a 1940s flick.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

By a newspaperman who has authored a book on running, this first mystery stars a newspaperman who does a lot of exactly that. Martin Grant, facing midlife reevaluation and divorce in frosty Iowa, slides south to Bananaville (Florida?), where a job as reporter on the metro beat and a shot at the ``big story'' of his dreams await him. A morally pure city-councilman named Rudolph Reed has been dead a month; Martin's hefty, hearty editor, Peter ``Elmer'' Fudd, thinks it might have been murder or that, at least, a look-see might sell papers. The subsequent interviews that Martin fits in between runs introduce him to Reed's reclusive wife and dysfunctional children, politicos with business secrets, an estranged cousin with shady local connections, and a neighborhood beauty who sells advertising, plays piano, and cares for twins but still has plenty of time for spiritually satisfying sex with our detective. Not surprisingly, it turns out that there are some nasty secrets hidden beneath Bananaville's placid surface, and that some of the locals wouldn't mind killing to keep them there. Lilliefors's derivative plot is delivered in a tone combining eccentricity with mystical musings (``No longer are we . . . much interested in the language of the spirit'') and offering enough citrus-and-surf imagery to choke a gator. This deliberately peculiar debut is open-ended enough for a sequel or two, but peculiar can strain hard to become the same as interesting. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

As the first of a series, this mystery has a great deal to offer: exotic Gulf Coast locale, peculiar characters, a highly motivated protagonist, and low-key humor. When investigative reporter Martin Grant arrives in Bananaville to consider a job with the local newspaper, the editor entices him with the unsolved murder of a city councilman who stood up to local developers. With a little help from his long-lost cousin, Nellie, and encouragement from sympathetic locals, he grabs hold of what could be his big story. A promising first novel.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312145489
• ISBN 13: 9780312145484
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 243