One does not usually think of Sarasota as a hotbed of criminal activity, but there is not just one, but two, popular mystery series set in this southwestern coastal Florida city.
According to thethrillingdetective.com Stuart Kaminsky’s transplanted northerner Lew Fonesca is “an unlicensed peeper, bargain basement dick and process server living out of his office overlooking the Dairy Queen on 301. “
Lew used to be an investigator for the State Attorney's Office in Cook County, Illinois, but when his wife was killed by a hit-and-run driver he quit his job, “packed his grief and headed south” to Florida. For $50 a day, plus expenses, “He tends to get involved, though he prefers to be left alone, with helping women and children in trouble.”
Although they have their lighter moments – mainly due to an entertaining assortment of odd characters – these books are generally dark in tone, and psychologically complex, dealing with questions of grief and depression.
Fonesca is just one of Edgar Award-winning Kaminsky’s distinguished and diverse protagonists: a Russian policeman (Porfiry Rostnikov), a Chicago police detective (Abe Lieberman), and a 1940s Hollywood private detective (Toby Peters).
The latest book – the sixth title in the series – is Bright Futures, which received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. The New York Times Book Review said “Pacing a series is a tricky maintenance job. Move too fast, your hero loses credibility. Move too slowly, your readers get bored. Move just right, you produce Denial.”
Fonesca is digging for the truth on two cases: A recent graduate of a public high school for the gifted has been arrested for the brutal murder of a local curmudgeon who was campaigning to end state-sponsored school funding and a semi-retired and much beloved singer of children's songs is being threatened with exposure as a sexual predator.
And then there is Blaize Clement’s sleuth Dixie Hemingway – no relation to “you-know-who” – who has given up her stressful job as a sheriff's deputy in Sarasota to become a professional pet sitter.
Dixie, still mourning the loss of her husband and young daughter in a freak accident three years earlier, finds a good friend in her new neighbor Laura Halston in Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof, the latest – and fourth – book in the series. When Laura is stabbed to death in the shower, Dixie suspects her soon-to-be ex-husband, “a sadistic surgeon” who is known to wield a mean scalpel.
Although definitely lighter than the Kaminsky novels, Clement’s books should not be dismissed out-of-hand as just another humorous feline mystery series. According to Publishers Weekly “Clement blends elements of cozy and thriller to produce an unusual and enjoyable hybrid.”
By the way, “you-know-who” – Ernest Hemingway himself – will make his detecting debut next August in Hemingway Deadlights by Michael Atkinson. Set across the state in Key West (in 1956) Papa H. – while dodging tourists and autograph hunters – investigates the suspicious death of a local who is found impaled on a harpoon.
