Blue Moon

The fourth Gideon Lowry mystery (following Love for Sale, 1997) follows the Key West PI on a quest to protect a beautiful woman in an adventure as low-key, upright and effective as the piano-playing shamus himself. Lowry may be a portly 60-year-old with colitis, but his affair 15 years earlier with chef Gabriella Wade remains a bright and warming memory. After Gaby asks him to look into the background of her new fiance, Lowry uses all his skills to find out the truth about slick Roy Emerson, whose business is vaguely described as making deals and bringing people together, and to whom the PI takes an instinctive dislike. Meanwhile, someone is trying to buy out the businesspeople and homeowners on Lowry's block to make room for yet another shopping mall. After the Cuban grocery next door is torched by an arsonist and the house Lowry has lived in for 30 years is damaged, he also starts looking for treacherous real estate schemers. Leslie juggles his subplots adroitly, neatly bringing them together in a satisfying conclusion to this tale of rampant tourism and corruption in Key West. Although less frenetic and flamboyant than the Florida noir of Carl Hiaasen, James W. Hall or Elmore Leonard, Leslie's latest delivers an atmospheric, thoughtful South Florida mystery. (Sept.)