Paradise

Smart, beautiful Molly Carmichael finds herself constantly cleaning up messes made by her dumb, beautiful son, Misty. Misty is a small-time hood who leaves a mom-and-pop store with $300,000 of the Scorcese crime family's money--after stowing Blitz Focoso in a cooler--and heads west in his old Toyota. Through a front man, the Scorceses hire PIs Abe and Izzy Stein to find Misty, an effort complicated a bit by Izzy's renewed passion for his old flame, Molly. In Colorado, Misty hooks up with cute, amoral Leslie Ann Rice and they fly to Hawaii, where she and her feckless ex-con father try to figure out how to best separate Misty from the money. The chase climaxes with most of the leading actors on the eponymous island paradise, and the ending is not happy for anyone. Savage ( Flamingos ) wastes nothing in this fast, intricate, often funny thriller, and if most characters aren't nice, even the most minor players are vivid and believable. (June)