Gumbo Limbo
An Alex Rutledge Mystery
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3.8 • 60 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Gumbo Limo marks the next Alex Rutledge mystery from critically acclaimed author Tom Corcoran. Key West has never been so deadly....
Alex Rutledge, freelance and part-time Key West crime scene photographer, awakes to his first day off in months. Late August, the off-season, the dog days. Everything's okay until his phone rings. His old navy buddy, Zack Cahill, now a successful Chicago banker, is in town and, at 8:00 a.m., drunk in Sloppy Joe's. Zack demands that Rutledge join him for a celebratory beer. When Alex arrives at the bar, eight minutes later, Cahill is gone.
The day continues downhill. A high-noon murder in the tourist district, the ransacked apartment of a local bartender, and the chance encounter of Abby Womack, Cahill's ex-mistress, combine to convince Alex that Zach Cahill's disappearance may be linked to all of these events. An overnight fire and a drive-by shooting the next morning amplify the strangeness and danger.
By calling in favors from a crew of Key West characters, stepping aside of law enforcement, and traveling to New Orleans in an attempt to help his friend, Rutledge will fall deep into a mysterious range war, a fight for the profits from a twenty-year-old smuggling deal.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The sharpest nose in the mystery business must belong to Corcoran: on almost every page of his smart second book featuring Key West crime scene photographer Alex Rutledge (after 1998's The Mango Opera), there's an olfactory image--from the rot in Alex's yard to the smell of a woman in his bed. All the other senses are addressed vigorously, too, as Rutledge offers a street-by-street tour of the lively town at the end of America, with a side trip to the seedier parts of New Orleans. Corcoran is so slick he can suck in the reader with the corniest of plot clich s: an urgent phone call from an old Navy buddy who then disappears, leaving behind a trail of dead bodies. Was financial wizard Zack Cahill kidnapped from his barstool at Sloppy Joe's because he knew about the huge payoff of a long-ago drug deal? Or is Cahill himself part of the scam? Why is Zack's ex-mistress in Key West, and who wants her dead? What part does the tantalizing police officer Teresa Barga play in the drama? And will Alex's friendly foe, Key West's cop Chicken Neck Liska, succeed in his run for sheriff? Corcoran lubricates his tangled plot with lashings of rum and beer and keeps it moving across a shrewdly observed landscape that reeks with authenticity. The gumbo is spicy, the limbo swift in this hot pepper of a novel. Author tour.
