Tom Corcoran -- The Alex Rutledge Novels

<body topmargin="0" leftmargin="0"> <h1 style="line-height: 17.5pt"> <b> <font face="Franklin Gothic Book">Tom Corcoran - a man of many talents</font></b></h1> <p class="Chelt-CB" style="line-height: 17.5pt"> <b> <font face="Franklin Gothic Book">Tom Corcoran first moved to Florida in 1970. He has been a disc jockey, bartender, AAA travel counselor, U. S. Navy officer, freelance photographer, automotive magazine editor, computer graphic artist, and journalist. </font> </b> </p> <p class="Chelt-CB" style="line-height: 17.5pt"> <b> <font face="Franklin Gothic Book">Corcoran’s photographs have appeared on seven Jimmy Buffett album covers. He co-wrote the Buffett hits, “Cuban Crime of Passion,” and “Fins.” His photos also have appeared on numerous book jackets, including those of Thomas McGuane (“An Outside Chance”), Winston Groom (“Forrest Gump”), and Florida novelists Les Standiford (“Black Mountain” and “Last Train to Paradise”) and James W. Hall (“Hot Damn”). From 1987 to 1993 Corcoran edited “Mustang Monthly.” His editor’s columns were collected in book form, released as “Hoofbeats” in 1994.</font></b></p> <p class="Chelt-CB" style="line-height: 17.5pt"> <b> <font face="Franklin Gothic Book">As co-owner of The Ketch & Yawl Press, Corcoran has published three South Florida-related books in the past four years, “Remembering Ernest Hemingway,” by James Plath and Frank Simons; “Key West Collection,” by Dorothy Raymer; and “The Young Wrecker on the Florida Reef,” by Richard Meade Bache. Corcoran’s photographs of Key West are included in the Raymer book, and he wrote the introduction for “The Young Wrecker.” </font> </b> </p> <p class="Chelt-CB" style="line-height: 17.5pt"> <b><font face="Franklin Gothic Book">In addition to his Alex Rutledge, Florida Keys-based mystery series, Corcoran's three books on classic Ford Mustangs and Shelbys remain<br> popular after ten years in print. His fourth Alex Rutledge mystery, Octopus Alibi, published by St. Martin's Minotaur/Thomas Dunne Books, is available in bookstores now.<br>  </font></b></p> <p class="Chelt-CB" style="line-height: 17.5pt"> <b> <font face="Franklin Gothic Book">Tom lives in the Lower Keys. </font> </b> </p> <p align="left"><font face="Franklin Gothic Book" size="3">   If you bought the paperback version of “Octopus Alibi,” you will have found what the publishing biz calls a teaser at the end of the book. It was the first chapter of my next book, “Air Dance Iguana,” or, at least, the first chapter as it existed a year ago. <br>     It’s changed. The modifications made more sense to me and to Alex. So, because you were “cheated” out of a real first-chapter teaser, here is the true item. <br> I hope it inspires you to order the book immediately. Or to order a dozen—they make great holiday gifts. <br>     On behalf of Rutledge, Liska, Bobbi, Marnie, and Carmen—thanks for reading! <br> <a href="nairdancesample.htm">Click here to read a sample of "Air Dance Iguana"</a><br> Tom Corcoran </font> <p align="left"> <p align="left"> <p align="left"><b><font face="Franklin Gothic Book">"I made at least twenty fishing trips to Key West beginning in the late sixties until the early nineties when this hyper-energetic little city plumb wore me out. Naturally I explored fully the soft underbelly of the town, but then gradually realized Key West was all underbelly. Tom Corcoran's 'Octopus Alibi' is a true marvel of a mystery, a deeply engrossing guidebook to the mango opera that is life in Key West."</font></b><p align="left"> <b><font face="Franklin Gothic Book"> <i>-- Jim Harrison, author of Off to the Side, Dalva, and Legends of the Fall </i><br> <br> <br> "Octopus Alibi captures dead-on Key West’s singular blend of tropical beauty, exotic charm, and inimitable sleaze. The tale is as twisted and delicious as an island cocktail -- if Tom Corcoran has become the Ross Macdonald of Margaritaville, then protagonist crime scene photographer Alex Rutledge is Lew Archer incarnate, in a parrot-head shirt. This one will take you there." <br> <br> <i>-- Les Standiford, author of Bone Key and Havana Run</i></font></b><table border="0" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse" width="750"> <tr> <td width="70%"> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><font face="Franklin Gothic Book"><i>Bone Island Mambo:</i></font></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><font face="Franklin Gothic Book">Starts fast and never lets up. Corcoran’s plot and range of characters add to a series that won’t quit. Treat yourself to an exotic setting, laughs, and suspense.”             - Janet Evanovich</font></b></p> <p class="BlurbText" align="left"><b><font face="Franklin Gothic Book"> Concise and breezy… the Key West tourists rarely see. Alex Rutledge should be attracting more fans to his laid-back lifestyle, which always includes a murder or two.                               - Otto Penzler<i> </i>(<i>Penzler Pick, </i>May 2001)</font></b></p> <p class="BlurbText"><b><font face="Franklin Gothic Book">Corcoran has a feel for the laissez-faire Key West style, and knows how to meld island history into his stories.                                                                  <i>       - Booklist</i></font></b></p> <p class="BlurbText"><b><i><font face="Franklin Gothic Book">BONE ISLAND MAMBO by Tom Corcoran<br> Key West-based mystery, starring Alex Rutledge<br> Hardcover release, May 2001<br> St. Martin’s Press / Minotaur<br> $23.95 ISBN: 0-312-24281-6<br> Mass-market paperback release, August 2002<br> St. Martin’s Press / Minotaur $6.95 ISBN: 0-312-98008-6</font></i></b></p> </tr> <tr> <td width="70%">  </tr> <tr> <td width="70%"><b><font face="Franklin Gothic Book"><br> Praise for Gumbo Limbo by Tom Corcoran</font></b><p align="left"> <b> <font face="Franklin Gothic Book">Corcoran lubricates his tangled plot with lashings of rum and beer and keeps it moving across a shrewdly observed landscape… The gumbo is spicy, the limbo is swift in this hot pepper of a novel.<br>                 - Publishers Weekly (Starred Review), August 9, 1999<br> <br> Tom Corcoran delivers a well-plotted, atmospheric mystery that even surpasses his superior debut, The Mango Opera. The author keeps a good balance in Gumbo Limbo between the weird and the reality…[and] brings a vivid imagination to the Florida mystery fold.<br>                         - Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, September 1999<br> <br> …plenty of offbeat characters and subplots to keep the action moving. The story even jumps from Key West to New Orleans, probably the only other suitable environment for this quirky Florida mystery. If you liked [The Mango Opera], be sure to grab this sophomore effort. It is better than the debut, high praise.<br>                                                              - Bookline, August 1999<br> <br> Palm trees and murder. It’s an irresistible combination for a mystery writer, and readers. It’s the classic stuff of what film critic Roger Ebert has called “Florida noir.” <br>                                           - Lakeland Ledger, September, 1999<br> <br>  </font></b></p> <p><b><i><font face="Franklin Gothic Book">GUMBO LIMBO by Tom Corcoran<br> Key West-based mystery, starring Alex Rutledge<br> (Original Hardcover release, September 1999)<br> Mass-market paperback release, November 2000<br> St. Martin’s Press / Minotaur $6.50 ISBN: 0-312-97570-8</font></i></b></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="70%"><b><font face="Franklin Gothic Book"><br> PRAISE FOR THE MANGO OPERA:<br>  </font></b><p><b><font face="Franklin Gothic Book">Tom Corcoran served me my first beer in Key West at the Chart Room Bar over twenty-five years ago. Now he has put his “time on the water” to great use and has produced a book that reconnects my heart and brain to the Key West that I knew as an unknown bar singer. Was it a kinder and gentler place? Hell, no, and that was the best thing about it. The Mango Opera is about as accurate a description of those days as there is around today.<br>                                                                            - Jimmy Buffett<br>  <br> The Mango Opera is a powerful debut novel full of juicy characters, crackling dialog and thrill-a-minute action. Not since McGuane’s 92 in the Shade has Key West been rendered so vividly and with such spare poetry. Tom Corcoran is the real thing – a novelist with a mature voice, a powerful vision and a great ear for the rhythms of human speech. This is a smart, exciting novel, one not to be missed. <br>                                                                           – James W. Hall<br> <br> Tom Corcoran means business. This new thriller isn’t a laugh-a-minute lightweight to grin at while awaiting your next—but surely not last—rum runner. You won’t think of Key West as quite so laid-back again.<br>                                                                      - The Miami Herald<br>  <br> The genius of imagination and the genius of realism don’t often take up housekeeping in one writer’s skull. But Tom Corcoran has combined a viciously creative plot with a perfect description of Key West as it really is, and the result is good to the bone. <br>                                                                            – P.J. O’Rourke<br>  <br> The Mango Opera is a very engrossing novel. It drew strongly on me and I was totally submerged in it. As an old Key West hand I wondered about the underbelly of a city that used to be all underbelly, and Corcoran deftly evokes the spirit and physicality of the place, the low tide jubilance and enlivening fetor of its pleasures and instinctive criminality, as if the sun and ocean had blasted all the flowers of evil into its very genes. <br>                                                                             – Jim Harrison<br>  <br> Tom Corcoran knows the foul reaches of Key West and so do I. This is an evil book about an evil place. Don’t read this book if you have a tendency to wonder where your daughter is on long rainy nights. <br>                                                                 – Hunter S. Thompson<br>  <br> Alex Rutledge should be investigating Key West for years.<br>                                                      - Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel<br>  <br> The Mango Opera leapfrogs over many first-time novels to put Corcoran solidly in the company of the likes of Laurence Shames and Robert Crais. Readers will shout a resounding ‘Bravo!’ at the end of The Mango Opera. Tom Corcoran is off to a very fast start on what is sure to be a long career as a fine mystery novelist.<br>                                                                                  - BookPage<br>  <br> The Mango Opera, with its tropical setting, fruity characters, and hard-boiled dialogue, is a delicious treat.<br>                                                           - The St. Petersburg Times<br> <br> <i>THE MANGO OPERA by Tom Corcoran<br> Key West-based mystery, starring Alex Rutledge<br> (Original Hardcover release, May 1998)<br> Mass-market paperback release, September 1999<br> St. Martin’s Press / Minotaur $6.99 ISBN: 0-312-96988-0</i><br>  </font></b></td> </tr> </table> <p>Tom Corcoran<br> Copyright © 2003 [Tom Corcoran Inc.]. All rights reserved.<br> Revised: 01/27/08.</p> </body>