The Naked Detective

Laurence Shames

Oct 2011 · Recorded Books · Narrated by Ron McLarty

About this audiobook

Popular crime novelist Laurence Shames consistently draws favorable comparisons to Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen. In his Key West tales, Shames paints vivid, hilarious portraits of the sun-splashed "paradise" he calls home. The retired Pete Amsterdam isn't really a private investigator. But he has a license, a gun, and a listing in the phone book-all so he can write-off his wine cellar as an "office." While soaking in his hot tub and rethinking his earlier tennis match, the inevitable blonde in distress comes calling, and Pete is reluctantly pulled into his first case. Feeling trapped by the conventions of detective stories, Pete stumbles his way through the Key West crime scene, hardly realizing the danger he's in. The Naked Detective is vintage Shames-full of the biting wit, absurd scenarios, and quirky characters that recall his earlier works, such as Scavenger Reef and Mangrove Squeeze. Ron McLarty's narration captures the off-beat, colorful island and its inhabitants and brings them fully to life.

About the author

Laurence Shames was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1951, and graduated summa cum laude from NYU, in 1972. He became a journalist, and was published in magazines such as Playboy, Outside, Saturday Review, and Vanity Fair. In 1982, he was named Ethics columnist of Esquire, and also made a contributing editor. In 1991, Shames co- wrote a national non-fiction best-seller on the Mafia called Boss of Bosses, with two FBI agents. This success afforded him the opportunity to write fiction full-time, and he has since written ten Key West comic thrillers. He won the CWA Last Laugh Dagger Award for the funniest crime novel of 1995 with Sunburn.