Welcome to Paradise - by Laurence Shames (Paperback)

About the Book

When a low-level mobster and a furniture salesman--each with vanity license plates reading "Big Al"--decide to drive to Florida for their vacations, the stage is set for a brilliantly sharp, funny novel of mistaken identity and tropical crime. "Wickedly inventive".--"The Los Angeles Times".

Book Synopsis

Before mild-mannered furniture salesman Al Tuschman left New Jersey for a week in Key West, he hadn't an enemy in the world. But a series of puzzling assaults on his privacy, his sanity, and his life has turned his stay at the tasteful Paradise Hotel into Tropical Hell. Maybe it's the humidity. Maybe the Sambuca. Or maybe it's the nickname emblazoned on his license plate: Big Al.

For Big Al Marracotta, Mafia capo, a Florida getaway means outrunning a career in crime and rancid calamari. For Katy Sansone it's a bid for sunshine and self-respect--until a case of mistaken identity pits the confused woman against a bafflement of Als and more danger than any one of them had reason to pack for. Now, if Tuschman doesn't watch his back, somebody's going to be reporting the death of another salesman. . . .

From the Back Cover

Before mild-mannered furniture salesman Al Tuchman left New Jersey for a week in Key West, he hadn't an enemy in the world. But a series of puzzling assaults on his privacy, his sanity, and his life has turned his stay at the tasteful Paradise Hotel into Tropical Hell. Maybe it's the humidity. Maybe the Sambuca. Or maybe it's the humidity. Maybe the Sambuca. Or maybe it's the nickname emblazoned on his license plate: Big Al.

For Big Al Marracotta, Mafia capo, a Florida getaway means outrunning a career in crime and rancid calamari. For Katy Sansone, it's a bid for sunshine and self-respect -- until a case of mistaken identity pits the confused woman against a bafflement of Als and more danger than any one of them had reason to pack for. Now, if Tuschman doesn't watch his back, somebody's going to be reporting the death of another salesman....

Review Quotes

"WICKEDLY INVENTIVE."
--Los Angeles Times

"A DARKLY COMIC TALE."
--People

"THE STORY UNFOLDS AT COMIC WARP SPEED. . . . This is burlesque, as campy and crude as a night at a stag party.
But it is also a love story, scored for belly laughs."
--New York Daily News

"ZANY HUMOR . . . Shames mixes sun and fun, wise guys and dumb guys, smart gals and bad gals with such wit and style it makes you want to head straight to Key West and join the party."
--The Orlando Sentinel

About the Author

Laurence Shames is the author of six previous novels: Florida Straits, Scavenger Reef, Sunburn, Tropical Depression, and Virgin Heat, and Mangrove Squeeze. With his wife, Marilyn, he divides his time between Key West and Steamboat Springs, Colorado.