South Beach Shakedown
A
Mick Sever Mystery
Don
Bruns
Oceanview Publishing (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-933515-02-3 (1933515023)
ISBN-13: 978-1-933515-02-1 (9781933515021)
Publication Date: September 2006
List Price: $24.95
Synopsis
(from
the publisher): Someone is about to make a killing in the music
industry. Why would songwriting legend Gideon Pike mysteriously
disappear just when he is about to turn a 30-year career into a
multi-million dollar profit?
Music columnist Mick Sever is back in Don Brun’s third
suspense masterpiece. This time he’s looking for
answers and his missing friend in the gritty backrooms of South
Beach’s biggest nightclubs, dodging suicide speedboats and
running from sniper fire. What surfaces is how the major players in the
music industry are not making the headlines, they’re just
pulling the strings that create them. Hit it right, and the royalties
– even someone else’s – can rake in
millions for the rest of your life. The key is finding Gideon before
Korean mobster Jimmy Shinn does. Jimmy is ready to cash in on the one
secret that will bring Gideon to his knees and strip away
what’s left of his career, his fortune, and his life. Whoever
gets to Gideon first will ether save him or pull the trigger.
The deadly race is on.
Review:
South Beach
Shakedown: The Diary of Gideon Pike is the third entry in
the mystery series featuring music and entertainment reporter Mick
Sever, this time set in sunny and sultry Miami.
At the request of his ex-wife, Ginny, Sever travels to Miami to search
for Gideon Pike, a legend of rock and roll and an old friend of
Sever's, who has suddenly disappeared after agreeing to allow Ginny to
publish his diaries. Though controlling a music catalog worth hundreds
of millions of dollars, Gideon is living a fairly austere lifestyle
leaving Sever to wonder if this change of fortune has anything to do
with a Korean businessman who seems to be intimately involved in
Gideon's corporate and personal activities. When some of Gideon's
associates are subsequently murdered, Sever looks into Gideon's past
and discovers long buried secrets that someone is willing to kill to
keep hidden.
The primary problem with South
Beach Shakedown is that, with one notable exception, Bruns
doesn't develop his characters in any meaningful way, and especially
falls flat with the series character, Mick Sever. No matter how
interesting a plot may be, if a book is populated with 1-dimensional
characters, it simply isn't compelling. The exception here is the
richly drawn Jimmy Shinn, Sever's nemesis in the story, though even his
presence isn't enough to recommend this book.
Bruns favors a choppy style of writing, using short sentences and
paragraphs, clipped dialog, and chapters rarely longer than a few
pages. For a mystery set in the world of rock and roll, South Beach Shakedown
never develops a rhythm of its own.
Special thanks to Maryglenn McCombs Book Publicity for providing an ARC of South Beach Shakedown: The Diary of Gideon Pike for this review.
Review Copyright © 2006 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved.
Mysteries in this series ...
Jamaica Blue
St. Martin's Minotaur (Hardcover), October 2002
ISBN-10: 0-312-30490-0 (0312304900)
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-30490-4 (9780312304904)
Barbados Heat
St. Martin's Minotaur (Hardcover), November 2003
ISBN-10: 0-312-30492-7 (0312304927)
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-30492-8 (9780312304928)
South Beach
Shakedown
Oceanview Publishing (Hardcover), September 2006
ISBN-10: 1-933515-02-3 (1933515023)
ISBN-13: 978-1-933515-02-1 (9781933515021)
St. Barts
Breakdown
Oceanview Publishing (Hardcover), March 2008
ISBN-10: 1-933515-12-0 (1933515120)
ISBN-13: 978-1-933515-12-0 (9781933515120)
Omnimystery keywords for South Beach Shakedown
...
Location(s) referenced: Miami.