Fiction review: Florida mysteries

Forget the fantasy of Disney World, or the Gulf Coast waves falling soft upon the shore, or the glamour of Worth Avenue. Mysteries set in Florida have become a booming subgenre, and these four writers know well that peril often lies beneath the palms.

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When grief and rage collide, watch out.

Daniel Thorn, a middle-aged fisherman and serial monogamist, has lived off the grid in Key Largo for years. He has neither Social Security card nor driver's license, but he possesses a moral sense that has often landed him in turbulent waters.

In "Dead Last" (326 pages, Minotaur Books, $25.99), the 12th installment in James W. Hall's series, Thorn's wife, Rusty Stabler, has just lost a short battle with pancreatic cancer, and Thorn, in an emotional maelstrom, piles his possessions on a bonfire and lights it. But he's interrupted by 19-year-old Sheriff Buddha Hilton of Starkville, Okla., who tells him that Rusty's obituary has been found at the scene where a Starkville lawyer was speared to death.

Further complicating matters, the obit was written by The Miami Herald's April Moss, with whom Thorn shared a one-night stand years ago. And her twin sons work on "Miami Ops," a television show centered on a mysterious killer in a bodysuit who dispatches victims and then leaves an obit nearby.

Buddha, a woman who has survived brutality, and Thorn set off for Miami, where the blood flows freely and Hall paints a lyrical picture of its beauty and its corruption, with an emphasis on mankind's shortcomings:

"Nothing the city fathers could ever build, nothing any developer could devise, no magical architecture, no wild aquatic designs, no sculptured neon or gleaming towers in the sky, no man-made extravagance could ever rival the simple interplay of tropical light and salt-laden maritime air that was freely provided every day. They might as well stop trying."

Like all of Hall's work, "Dead Last" exemplifies Florida noir, wherein nature's wonders intersect with human depravity. But as filled with violence as it is, his latest novel, like the entire distinguished series, finds its ultimate power in the humanity with which some people try to right unspeakable wrongs.

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During her first encounter with Sarasota pet sitter and former deputy sheriff Dixie Hemingway, supermodel Briana isn't exactly dressed to kill. But has she?

As "The Cat Sitter's Pajamas" (272 pages, Minotaur Books, $24.99) — the seventh installment in Blaize Clement's series — opens, Dixie has arrived at the home of Tampa Bay Buccaneers inside linebacker Cupcake Trillin and his wife, Jancey, to check on their cats, Elvis and Lucy, she's surprised to find Briana inside, wearing nothing but one of Cupcake's shirts. Briana claims to be Cupcake's wife, but Dixie knows that's a lie and steps outside to call the Trillins, who are vacationing in Italy. When Cupcake tells her he has never met Briana, Dixie re-enters the house, only to find a woman's body on the floor and Briana claiming innocence.

Before long, Dixie finds herself pursued by criminals who specialize in counterfeit fashions and will stop at nothing, including placing Dixie in peril. But with the help of the Sarasota County authorities and Elvis, who finds a clue, Dixie is able to unmask a murderer.

Clement again skillfully melds the cozy with the thriller in this mystery, whose appeal comes not only from the plot but also from further development of Dixie and, as always, the charming animals.

But Clement's readers will be saddened to learn that she lost her battle with cancer in July. Clement leaves a profound legacy through her books, which are filled with wit, wisdom and humanity.

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Key West, writes Lucy Burdette, is a place for "the leftover hippies, the parrotheads, the folks sick of forcing their square peg selves into round holes. People who didn't quite fit in with the rest of the world had somehow blended into a wonderful, colorful family in Key West."

But "the last resort," as it's called, can also be a place of violence, and that's the focus of "An Appetite for Murder" (294 pages, Obsidian, $7.99), the first in Burdette's projected series featuring 25-year-old Hayley Snow.

Hayley has left New Jersey after falling in lust with Key West lawyer Chad Lutz. But it's not long before she discovers him in bed with Kristen Faulkner and then finds herself on the street. But college roommate Connie Arp invites Hayley to share her houseboat, and Hayley applies for a job as restaurant critic for a startup magazine, Key Zest. Trouble is, Kristen is a co-owner of the publication, and when she's found dead — poisoned by a Key lime pie — Hayley becomes the chief suspect — and the target of the killer.

Burdette laces "An Appetite for Murder" with a clever plot, a determined if occasionally ditzy heroine and a wealth of local color about Key West and its inhabitants. You'll eat it up.

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As a police reporter for The Miami Herald, Edna Buchanan won a Pulitzer Prize, the George Polk Award for Career Achievement in Journalism — and admiration from colleagues, cops and citizens. As a novelist, her Miami-set thrillers have received acclaim and wide readership.

Now, in "A Dark and Lonely Place" (418 pages, Simon & Schuster, $26), she combines the two roles — and adds that of historian — in a gripping tale of love and crime, fact and fiction.

The (slightly adapted) facts: In the late 19th century near present-day Fort Myers, John Ashley and Laura Upthegrove, both children of Florida pioneers, fell in love as teenagers. But circumstances conspired against them. As a young man, John was accused — possibly falsely — of murder, convicted and sentenced to hang. He escaped before going to the gallows and eventually became the leader of a gang that specialized in bank robberies and bootlegging. With Laura at his side, he wanted a quiet life, not one on the run, but that was not to be, and the charismatic young man — a folk hero to Florida's "crackers" — was killed by authorities. Laura died by her own hand three years later.

The fiction: Fast-forward to present-day Miami, where Detective Sgt. John Ashley meets model Laura Groves at the scene of a nasty murder, the death of high-powered Seminole lawyer Ron Joe Eagle. But Eagle's death has opened a can of slime within the police department, and John and Laura find themselves suspects in numerous crimes and are forced to flee, echoing the events of the earlier couple.

Buchanan, a born storyteller but not content to be confined by that categorization, interweaves the historical tale with her latter-day one to ask troubling questions about nature and nurture, DNA and predestination. And in doing so, she adds a layer of depth to a book she says she has "yearned to write for half my life."

With the imagination of a novelist, the keen eye and snappy prose of a journalist and the knowledge of a longtime Floridian, Buchanan has created a story that exquisitely captures Old Florida with its current incarnation — and has fashioned not one but two love stories that grip and move. "A Dark and Lonely Place" exhibits on a grand scale the talents of a bright and dazzling writer.