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Air Dance Iguana (Alex Rutledge Mysteries) |
Author: Tom Corcoran
Published: 2006-10-31 |
List price: $6.99
Our price: $6.99
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As of: January 06th, 2009 02:41:26 AM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 As comfortable as a blown-out flipflop
Corcoran brings back Key West freelance photographer Alex Rutledge for his fifth turn as an accidental private investigator. His listening and observation skills honed in living on the keys for several decades provide him with an ability and aptitude for curiosity that well suits him for his amateur pursuit. (If this paragraph sounds familiar, see my review of Backstabber: A Hitchcock Sewell Mystery by Tim Cockey, which I read just before this and found strikingly similar in style and series cadence).
In this outing Rutledge is bedeviled by his ne'er-do-well brother, who ends up accused of a pair of revenge hangings, shortly before a third raises our hero's question--answered by his intrepid newspaper report/friend--of how long its been since there were any such gruesome murders in Paradise. Rutledge scents out odd reactions among local law enforcement, and in his laid-back Island style ends up putting himself in danger's way several times, and ends up solving the case, but not before one last imbroglio that nearly leaves him, well, hanging.
I've never been to Key West except in a Jimmy Buffett song, but Corcoran's word pictures evoke both its awe and awfulness through the lens of a long time resident. Iguana is fun, fast, and as comfortable as a blown-out flipflop.
 Enjoyed the setting, plot needed work
Florida Keys resident Alex Rutledge is a photographer and, lately, a police photographer. There hasn't been a hanging on the Keys in thirty years and, suddenly, there are two and maybe three. The odd thing is that Alex, rather than a policeman, was the only one at all three crime scenes and he's having a hard time convincing the police the three crimes are not suicide and are related. His problems increase when his older brother, who looks almost like Alex but has a less than clean record, comes to town and becomes a suspect.
I enjoyed the setting of the Florida Keys and, to me, it was one of the most interesting parts of the book. The plot was improbable that, even with so many jurisdictions, the police work could be that sloppy and that Alex could come up with information and connections the police couldn't. But that's my problem with most stories whose protagonists are amateur sleuths. Still, I enjoyed the characters, the dialogue and the setting. It wasn't a great book, but it was an okay read.
Another Great One
I have read all of the Alex Rutledge series and if you love Key West these are the books for you. If you do not love Key West get ready to.
5th Book and still worth while.
Well done for the 5th book by the author. The story moves along and provides a taste of the Florida Keys. My only complaint is the author's addiction to building the story that is always tied to Rutledge's personal life in Key West during the 1970s.
 Keyed Up
Alex Rutledge actually gets into action out of Key West, albeit it is just across the seven mile bridge. Maybe it is that Corcoran's soul is in Key West more than most of the many writers based there, but this latest of his tightly plotted and well written novels has a sense of the spirit of the place that I find in few of the others. The author knows his setting and characters (with Alex Rutledge the sometimes crime photographer, sometimes freelancer, pal of "Chicken Neck" - former Key West city detective, now Monroe County Sheriff, Alex's past and present lovers, associates and now rogue brother, Tim) there is a cast appropriate to the Keys. The actual strange mix of legal jurisdictions - Monroe County, State of Florida, City of Key West and other Keys' cities, the Feds with immigration, shore patrol, coast guard and FBI - has made for the sort of tangle of ambitions, secrets and confusions which a crime novelist of Corcoran's skill can exploit to create a great read.
The everpresent signs spotted by every tourist describing the Keys: "A quaint little drinking town with a fishing problem!" are at work here. We first see Tim in custody, outside the Bull and Whistle after a few of their very cold draft beers. The mysterious coincidences of the Keys: lookalikes, chance meetings, odd meetings of e spouses and old friends in saloons or walking along Smathers beach, which all Key residents know happen, may be the greatest stretchers of readers' credulity, but spend a month in Marathon sometime and the reality of such unrealities will sink in. And then there are Keys' jokes. "jackalope" would not stand a chance there. We wonder throughout about the murders by davit that start the novel off - are they some ironic joke. Only at the end will you learn. And it will be worth it. A word of caution Do not skip ahead and spoil it .
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