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Welcome to Paradise

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
Laurence Shames has attracted enthusiastic fans with his Key West novels, which include Florida Straits, Mangrove Squeeze, Scavenger Reef, and Sunburn. Each of these books is a hilarious mixture of zany crimes and offbeat characters. Welcome to Paradise is his best yet.
When Al Marracotta, Mafia boss, takes a week's vacation in Key West, he looks forward to days of sun, sex, and seafood. Alan Tuschman, New Jersey furniture salesman, is a reluctant tourist. He has won a week in Key West for his sales record. But they have something in common: vanity license plates that read BIG AL.
So when two goons are sent to ruin Big Al's vacation, it's not long before they target the wrong guy. Between the frustrated henchmen and the baffled Als, each chapter grows loonier than the last. And with the addition of a romantic wild card, the winsome Katy Sansone, the tough guys' schemes are tempered by more tender scenes.
Narrator Ron McLarty's fine performance keeps the action moving at a brisk clip.
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    • AudioFile Magazine
      In another in of Shames's situation comedies about life in colorful Key West two vacationers head for the Keys--the object of a Manhattan gangland vendetta and a melancholy furniture salesman from Jersey. Thugs hired to harass the former are told to identify him by his vanity plates. Guess who has identical vanity plates from another state? Ron McLarty does an amusing job with this slender fare, particularly with the characterizations. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      March 29, 1999
      His seventh comic thriller set in the Florida Keys finds Shames running out of fun. The usual suspects make up the cast of charactersbumbling two-bit Mafioso grifters and hitmen who find themselves in ludicrous situationsbut the players seem perfunctorily one-dimensional, and their predicaments, while humorous in premise, come off contrived rather than comic. Minor mobster Nicky Scotto is convinced that rival Big Al Marracottaa five-foot midget who replaced him as boss of the Mafia-run Fulton Fish Marketpoisoned him with bad clams. He enlists Chop Parilla, a Hialeah hot car dealer and his henchman, Squid Berman, to even the score. They plan to get Big Al when hes on vacation in Key West with his willowy girlfriend, Katy Sansone. The two hoods think theyve found their victim, except theres more than one guy in Key West with Big Al license plates. When Squid and Chop mistakenly zero in on hulking Al Tuschman, former high school football hero and Jersey furniture salesman, they play tepid dirty tricks such as putting 50 pounds of spoiled calamari in the wrong Als Lexus, and a live lobster in his bed. Ultimately, Katy becomes fed up with being the sex toy of the degenerate mini-mobster Al, and opts for Al the gentle giant. Meanwhile, Nicky, anxious to regain his former position as head honcho of the fish market, contracts a hit to assassinate his rival. The new lovers, Al and Katy, are entertaining characters, but their amiable romance doesnt keep the plot from getting corny or tired. Unlike his bestselling contemporaries Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen, who consistently bring freshness to similar material, Shames seems to have misplaced the enthusiasm that marked his early work (Florida Straits, etc.).

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