Scavenger Reef

Rating:
Summary: Tried hard, couldn't finish it.
Review: After enjoying a few Laurence Shames novels, especially his wonderful 'Sunburn', 'Scavenger Reef' was a total disappointment. While the story has some promise (exposing the hijinx of art collectors and dealers) it winds up being very uneven, and an often a tiresome read. The characters are diverse yet completely unlikable, and I lost interest in the plot early on. Unlike his other books the magic and craziness of Key West doesn't shine through at all.

Bottom line: a mess. Best avoided. Read 'Sunburn' instead.

Rating:
Summary: no sparkle in this 'comic' mystery novel...
Review: After enjoying a few Laurence Shames novels, especially his wonderful 'Sunburn', 'Scavenger Reef' was a total disappointment. While the story has some promise (exposing the hijinx of art collectors and dealers) it winds up being very uneven, and an often a tiresome read. The characters are diverse yet completely unlikable, and I lost interest in the plot early on. Unlike his other books the magic and craziness of Key West doesn't shine through at all.

Bottom line: a mess. Best avoided. Read 'Sunburn' instead.

Rating:
Summary: Shames leaves thugs and enters a world of light
Review: Although this book attempts to set itself in the same colorful "wacky Florida crime" world of Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiassen, it falls totally flat. The idea is kind of nice, a beloved Key West painter goes missing in a storm and is presumed dead. His agent holds a memorial show of his work in an attempt to drive up the price of the posthumous painters work., this results in a canonizing review by a super-influential critic. A little later a Sotheby's auction is arranged and his friends, agent, and others all try and cash in on the painter's new cachet. Meanwhile, he comes back from the dead, throwing a spanner in everyone's plans! So, someone tries to kill him to maintain the value of the art. It's a neat idea, but not particularly well executed. Airplane reading at best.

Rating:
Summary: Tried hard, couldn't finish it.
Review: I listened to this book (on CDs) and kept listening, hoping that it will get interesting. But no! Finally, about a quarter of the way in the 7th CD -- it's only on 8 CDs! -- I finally had to chuck the CD out and move on. If there was some neat twist in the end then I lost out, but, given the rest of the ho-hum novel, I doubt it.

Rating:
Summary: Shames leaves thugs and enters a world of light
Review: With Scavenger Reef, Laurence Shames leaves his entertaining crowd of displaced mafia thugs and paints a stunning portrait of a creative life in a real-world (if Kew-West-surreal) context. As a growing fan of the Florida mysteries by Leonard, Hiaasen, Hall, Shames, and others I like to identify what I consider the Key Book by each author, the one you most eagerly recommend. With Leonard it's La Brava. Tourist Season is the Key Book from Carl Hiaasen as is Under Cover of Daylight for James W. Hall. For Laurence Shames I definitely recommend Scavenger Reef. The usual literary portrayal of artists is as hacks, or as painters of alegorical canvases that serve the needs of the novel but which never sound like a painting you'd want to look at. The qualities of Augie Silver's canvases are abstract and radiant, they inform the descriptions of every setting in the book. Within this well-told story of friends and enemies is a startling sense of light and space.