Welcome to Tampa, Mystery Readers

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South Florida often is the locale of choice for mystery writers. And indeed the east coast of Florida seems to have a large number of published mystery writers.
 
Of course, Randy Wayne White owns the Gulf Coast of Florida, especially the Sanibel/Captiva area, and P.J. Parrish has given us a peek at the Fort Myers region.

But this month boasts two novels set in the Tampa environs, and this is good news for mystery readers.

Florida—the state I have called home for a long time—is more like several states, with each part of the Sunshine State different from the other. Sometimes I think all we share are the heat and the eccentric criminals.

Brian Freeman’s Season of Fear is set in Tampa, around the Florida gubernatorial race. The action takes us from Tampa to Clearwater to Lake Wales, a place I have never seen in a mystery.

Season of Fear nails the Tampa area, taking us to some of its landmarks, neighborhoods, and breathtaking vistas.

Freeman's hero in Season of Fear is Cab Bolton, who is on a brief leave from his job as a police detective in Naples, Florida. Naples is a great little town, full of lovely restaurants and good shopping.

When my friend Toni is down, we always head to Naples to spend the day. It’s only 90 miles away from Fort Lauderdale and we make it a day trip. I would love to see a mystery set in Naples.

Dennis Lehane wraps up his trilogy about crime in the early part of the 20th century with World Gone By, set in the Tampa of the early 1940s.

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Lehane perfectly illustrates how Florida was during the 1940s, when urban sprawl was a fantasy and Ybor City was the district for Tampa’s Latin population.

World Gone By takes the reader to the city’s docks, its various underworlds, and its politics.

World Gone By concludes Lehane’s trilogy that began with The Given Day (2008). The novel picks up the story of Joe Coughlin in 1942, a decade after the events in Lehane’s Edgar Award-winning Live by Night (2012).

Florida has few landmarks that last through the decades. One of the jokes down here is that while there are some things that are more than a hundred years old, most of our “historical” sites seem to have sprung up during the 1940s.

But Freeman and Lehane both show a few places in common, despite the decades separately the stories.

Both novels make a trip to the terrific Columbia Restaurant that is still going strong in Tampa’s Ybor City. Often called Florida’s oldest restaurant, the Columbia was established in 1905.

Of course Freeman and Lehane aren’t the only ones to have written about Tampa.

Ace Atkins delved into Tampa history with his White Shadow (2006) about the death of mob boss Charlie Wall during 1955.

In my review of White Shadow, I said: “It’s 1955 and corruption seeps through the streets of Tampa. Sicilian and Cuban criminals vie for control of the city while leaders of each group also have plans for casinos in Havana. The strong community of Ybor City is fragrant with its cigar factories, but also marred by gangsters. It’s a toss up over which group is worse – the criminals or the crooked police force. Everyone – whether upstanding citizen or crook – has his eye on a young Cuban revolutionary named Fidel.

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Then the retired bootlegger and gambler Charlie Wall is bludgeoned in his home. The old kingpin nicknamed White Shadow once ruled Tampa and tales of his underground tunnels where shipments of rum were unloaded are still discussed.”

White Shadow also features a side trip to Gibsonton, a town where those who worked in carnival side shows settled, adding an intriguing glimpse into one of Florida’s secret enclaves.

Atkins had a string of excellent historical novels with various settings before he began his series about Mississippi sheriff Quinn Colson and his continuation of the Robert B. Parker Spencer novels.

And yes, the Columbia restaurant is in White Shadow.

Now, I can’t wait for a trip to Tampa…and dining at the Columbia.

Oline Cogdill
2015-03-07 15:35:00