The Mango Opera (St. Martin's Minotaur Mysteries)
by Tom Corcoran
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Book Summary Information
Author: Tom CorcoranEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-09-15
ISBN: 0312969880
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Book Reviews of The Mango Opera (St. Martin's Minotaur Mysteries)
Book Review: The Mango Opera
Summary: 5 Stars
Key West has produced many authors. Tom Corcoran is one of those. His past occupations have been very diverse, everything from U.S. Navy officer to AAA travel counselor. Now he is an author with a unique writing style. His ability to use imagery is amazing. He can describe a scene so that it is like looking at a photograph in your mind. Corcoran is a great mystery writer because he is also very good at foreshadowing. He can drop little hints throughout the book to make you think you know exactly what is going to happen and then throw you a curveball and completely turn the story around. He does a great job with characterization as well. As you read the story, you become familiar with the characters, as if it is someone that you would know as a friend. Corcoran is writing this book to show readers what life is like in the keys. It is not just a tropical paradise where nothing can go wrong. It is a real place where crime, corruption, and bad things do happen. The Mango Opera is about the deaths of some of some of the main character's friends. The plot contains corruption of the police, murder, theft, rape, jealousy and revenge. The author achieves his purpose because he makes it very clear that Key West is not all that it seems. Corcoran does a great job of introducing many characters so that it is hard to tell who the culprit is. Because of this, it is a good idea to jot down notes while you read so that you can keep the story straight. The universal truth is that it is hard to trust people unless they are your closest friends.
Summary of The Mango Opera (St. Martin's Minotaur Mysteries)
Although he prefers magazine work, freelance photographer Alex Rutledge won't turn down an occasional crime scene shoot for the City of Key West Police Department. But when a string of murders takes his viewfinder into strangely familiar territory, Alex's mellow island lifestyle shatters. One after another, someone is killing women who have intimately crossed Alex Rutledge's path. Maybe it's a coincidence. Maybe it's a conspiracy. Or maybe he's crazy. But the connection marks Alex as the prime suspect in a case so hot it's drawn in the county sheriff, the FBI, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. In a desperate race to save his name and his life, Alex dives into a one-man search for the dark, sweltering truth beneath a case that's pounding toward meltdown.
Key West has been a geographical muse for a gamut of writers from Wallace Stevens to Jimmy Buffett. Cast almost adrift, the last pearl on the string of islands that make up the end of America's East Coast, Key West endures in our imaginations as an expatriate paradise, a pirate hideaway, and a perpetual party. In his debut novel, The Mango Opera, Tom Corcoran does little to shatter these illusions. Indeed, he does quite a bit to fill out the uninitiated reader's understanding of the secretive and steamy history of Cayo Hueso.
Corcoran's hero, Alex Rutledge is a freelance photographer whose island life has taken a turn for the worse with the recent departure of his girlfriend, Annie Minnette. When he isn't shooting magazine glossies and menu food, Rutledge does a bit of forensic work for local law enforcement agencies. It's easy money until the morning he finds Annie's look-alike roommate posed for some gruesome portraits on the other side of his lens. Police begin to suspect a serial killer as the list of victims grows, and Rutledge suspects something more sinister when he realizes the list of victims reads like a page or two from his own little black book.
Like a tropical chef, Corcoran flavors The Mango Opera with colorful characters, crisp dialogue, island history, and quite a bit of dark but highly appropriate humor. He serves it all up in tasty bites that promise to satisfy almost any mystery lover.
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