Octopus Alibi

Rating:
Summary: Paradise Falls Apart
Review: Even though he has to prepare for an assignment on Grand Cayman which he needs for income, Alex leaves Key West with friend and (sometime) co-conspirator Sam Wheeler to lend his support when Sam has to identify his sister's body. After a misidentification and a meeting with a slimy detective looking into the homicide, he returns home to find everything falling apart.

His newly live-in love is strangely distant. The mayor is a suicide, and a good friend is dead. The one constant in his life seems to be his strained relations with the local police and sheriff's office.

A man who takes friendship seriously, he is immediately suspicious of the manner of the mayor's death and that of his seemingly healthy friend Naomi. Is there a connection between the 2 deaths? He can't give up the idea that Naomi may have met an untimely end, and is soon butting heads with the police in an effort to start an investigation.

Politics, land deals, sex, sun, sand, and sea. This one has it all. If there is one suggestion that I might make, it is to read the previous books before this one. If you get to know the characters populating Alex's Key West, then you will enjoy the way the story unfolds even more.

Rating:
Summary: well-written amateur sleuth
Review: He lives in Key West and makes his living in advertising and magazine articles. His heart is in photography and he sometimes shoots crime scenes when nobody else is available. He is called in to photograph the area of Mayor Steve Gomez's death, which the police are ruling is a suicide.

There's something about the scene that makes Steve think it wasn't a suicide. Hours later, Naomi Douglas is found dead and the medical examiner rules it death by natural causes. Alex finds a strong link between Steve and Naomi, including the fact they both came from the same Indiana hometown. After pleading, cajoling and begging, Alex gets the medical examiner to do an autopsy on Naomi and they discover a massive dose of oxcodone in her bloodstream. Now Alex has to find out what these two people knew that would make somebody want to kill them and then bring that somebody to justice.

OCTOPUS ALIBI is a very clever character study as well as a well-written amateur sleuth novel. The protagonist has all the makings of a good police officer because once he catches the scent, he never stops hunting his prey. Tom Corcoran has written an intricately woven mystery that sub-genre fans will take delight in as they go crazy trying to figure out who the perpetrator is.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: The best Rutledge novel yet
Review: I have read all of the Alex Rutledge novels by Corcoran and this one beats them all. I felt as if I were on the streets of Key West. The dialogue is gutsy and dead on, characters to love and hate. Tom Corcoran spins a murder mystery with the best of them.

Rating:
Summary: The best Rutledge novel yet
Review: I have read all of the Alex Rutledge novels by Corcoran and this one beats them all. I felt as if I were on the streets of Key West. The dialogue is gutsy and dead on, characters to love and hate. Tom Corcoran spins a murder mystery with the best of them.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent follow to his other great Rutledge Novels
Review: I was an inhabitant of the islands in the early 80's before the place got popular and crowded. Corcoran's description of the characters and the long term residents of the keys are dead on. If you know the keys and key west well, you will really enjoy this book and the other Rutledge novels. Fans of the Travis McGee series and Carl Hiassen's books would really enjoy this story as well as the others Corcoran mysteries. Keep them coming Tom!

Rating:
Summary: A Key West Mystery
Review: Of all the major "Keys" writers, Corcoran seems least frequent in publication, and this pays off in well written novels, or at least fast moving novels. He really is fun to read. Additionally, if you are "into" Key West, he's your writer. While there are actually two trips up and down to Miami, and a couple of "off island" forays, this book is centered in and plays on the ambience of that "last place in America." Alex Rutledge, Corcoran's photographer hero, tools up and down Simonton on his Cannondale or strolls the sidewalks of Duval, avoiding the overflow from Sloppy Joe's, dodging into Captain Tony's around the corner for an early beer. Certainly the Key West life style. There are many other little treasures: remembered sidewalk restaurants, cascades of bouganvillia on corners, the ocean mist, happy hour at Hog's Breath, regularly painted empty buildings. These are the observations of someone who knows the streets over time.

Dirty deeds in this novel, surprise, are linked to real estate development and illegal immigration. The two plots work, but are not systematically linked to each other. These are mingled with the unraveling of a relationship between Rutledge and his "roomie" Teresa, that not unfrequent disaster that comes about when two decide to live as one and abandon the freedom of separate apartments. As the novel drew to a close, I had the feeling that there were three distinct stories, all joined at Alex Rutledge. Still, both mystery plots are exciting, and enough to keep anyone reading the novel awake an extra hour. The romance ends, as is common in "Keys" novels with a promise of future solace.

For those who remember the days of clearing the pier of ships for sunset, or "tank" island (before the "condofying" of the island perimeter) wise contemporaries who bought Conch cottages for a song seem just a little long in the tooth. Such folk, also, have to be in their mid to late fifties and for we less lucky mortals self-knowledge forms plausability questions. One bit of K.W. zaniness, which someone eventually will seriously propose is a developer's Malory Square Dome with recorded projected sunsets to allow tourists to view the ten best in history. No mention of a guaranteed green flash, however.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent follow to his other great Rutledge Novels
Review: Of all the major "Keys" writers, Corcoran seems least frequent in publication, and this pays off in well written novels, or at least fast moving novels. He really is fun to read. Additionally, if you are "into" Key West, he's your writer. While there are actually two trips up and down to Miami, and a couple of "off island" forays, this book is centered in and plays on the ambience of that "last place in America." Alex Rutledge, Corcoran's photographer hero, tools up and down Simonton on his Cannondale or strolls the sidewalks of Duval, avoiding the overflow from Sloppy Joe's, dodging into Captain Tony's around the corner for an early beer. Certainly the Key West life style. There are many other little treasures: remembered sidewalk restaurants, cascades of bouganvillia on corners, the ocean mist, happy hour at Hog's Breath, regularly painted empty buildings. These are the observations of someone who knows the streets over time.

Dirty deeds in this novel, surprise, are linked to real estate development and illegal immigration. The two plots work, but are not systematically linked to each other. These are mingled with the unraveling of a relationship between Rutledge and his "roomie" Teresa, that not unfrequent disaster that comes about when two decide to live as one and abandon the freedom of separate apartments. As the novel drew to a close, I had the feeling that there were three distinct stories, all joined at Alex Rutledge. Still, both mystery plots are exciting, and enough to keep anyone reading the novel awake an extra hour. The romance ends, as is common in "Keys" novels with a promise of future solace.

For those who remember the days of clearing the pier of ships for sunset, or "tank" island (before the "condofying" of the island perimeter) wise contemporaries who bought Conch cottages for a song seem just a little long in the tooth. Such folk, also, have to be in their mid to late fifties and for we less lucky mortals self-knowledge forms plausability questions. One bit of K.W. zaniness, which someone eventually will seriously propose is a developer's Malory Square Dome with recorded projected sunsets to allow tourists to view the ten best in history. No mention of a guaranteed green flash, however.

Rating:
Summary: Great Fun! Key West Local Color With Hot Story Included!
Review: RUN....don't walk, to your nearest book seller and beg, borrow, or steal all four of Corcoran's Alex Rutledge novels. If Octopus Alibi hooks you, as I believe it will, you'll find multiple, fun to read who-done-it enjoyment in backtracking the previous three Rutledge sleuthing forays. Good fun, "lazy days" kind of reading. Lower Keys locals and frequent visitors alike are having an absolute blast peeking throughout to see where (or, if) they've been included (surely hoping that it's not jail or the morgue), and which political folly du jour gets a subtle send up. Of course the best places to eat or have drinks in or near Key West are also brought into the storyline. Yes, I can just see myself at sunset, re-reading Octopus Alibi at the bar at Louie's Backyard now, sipping a rum soda w/Key Lime, listening to "Cuban Crimes of Passion", & peeking around the pages to see if Rutledge shows up with a lady friend. Saw a sneak paragraph or two of Corcoran's next book, so I know that one is gonna be hot stuff, too! So, get yourself "hooked" - on Octopus Alibi right away!