Synopsis
P.I. Gideon "Bud" Lowry has been known to play Cole Porter tunes during his late-night piano gigs, but lately he's had reason to finger some melancholy melodies. Successful restaurateur Gabriella Wade is getting married. Years ago, Gideon and Gaby were more than just friends, before her true love -- her Blue Moon restaurant -- monopolized her time. But now her wheeler-dealer fiance, Roy Emerson, is refusing to take a simple medical test for a rare disease that may affect their children, and she wants Gideon to find out why.
Meanwhile, developers want to tear down Gideon's Duval Street domain to build a strip mall -- a tasteless tourist trap complete with a bar tended by scantily clad waitresses. Gideon has no intentions of selling or moving, and after a suspicious fire nearly destroys his home he suspects that real estate magnate Fred Pacey -- one of the biggest nitwits in Key West -- may have resorted to arson.
Fired up by his misfortunes and a strong desire to protect Gaby, Gideon begins an investigation into Roy Emerson's background that stretches from Key West to the Wild West -- Wyoming. And the results are explosive. Roy has been working with Fred Pacey on the Duval Street mall project. Worse yet, fatal accidents seem to follow Roy around, especially when his independently wealthy significant others carry large life insurance policies. To top it all off, before Gideon can amass enough evidence to open Gaby's love-blind eyes, she and Roy elope -- and disappear.
With throngs of tourists descending upon Key West for the annual Halloween parade, Gideon is one native Conch who isn't masking his fears. During the season reserved for mayhem and madness, all he holds dear is in jeopardy -- and if he doesn't find Gaby soon, he'll be left standing alone at the Blue Moon forever.
Publishers Weekly
The fourth Gideon Lowry mystery (following Love for Sale, 1997) follows the Key West PI on a quest to protect a beautiful woman in an adventure as low-key, upright and effective as the piano-playing shamus himself. Lowry may be a portly 60-year-old with colitis, but his affair 15 years earlier with chef Gabriella Wade remains a bright and warming memory. After Gaby asks him to look into the background of her new fianc , Lowry uses all his skills to find out the truth about slick Roy Emerson, whose business is vaguely described as making deals and bringing people together, and to whom the PI takes an instinctive dislike. Meanwhile, someone is trying to buy out the businesspeople and homeowners on Lowry's block to make room for yet another shopping mall. After the Cuban grocery next door is torched by an arsonist and the house Lowry has lived in for 30 years is damaged, he also starts looking for treacherous real estate schemers. Leslie juggles his subplots adroitly, neatly bringing them together in a satisfying conclusion to this tale of rampant tourism and corruption in Key West. Although less frenetic and flamboyant than the Florida noir of Carl Hiaasen, James W. Hall or Elmore Leonard, Leslie's latest delivers an atmospheric, thoughtful South Florida mystery. (Sept.)