Everything you’ve heard about Miami is true and it is also a lie. Miami is duplicitous. It is beauty and cruelty. How could it not be with gorgeous beaches and yachts on one side of the 1,950 square mile county and a swamp of deadly reptiles on the other? Soon after its incorporation in 1896, Miami was dubbed The Magic City as part of the marketing to sell pre-construction property in Henry Flagler’s blueprint of a city. The moniker is bitingly appropriate. We specialize in illusions, swindles, cons, and party tricks. Scams are born here. Luxury can be rented. (Seriously, you can rent a Lamborghini and a diamond-encrusted Cuban Link necklace for the day.)
Visitors fall in love with Miami during the breezy, sunlit winter months of art fairs, music festivals, and beach vacations. They erroneously move here, and then summer’s humidity and deadly weather quickly tarnish the glitz and glitter that seduced them. The weather is not the only thing that can kill you here. We have falling frozen iguanas, giant land snails with meningitis, sharks, rip currents, road rage drivers, and a ridiculously high cost of living. Everyone has a side hustle, and sometimes the side hustle has a side hustle. Take, for example, Miriam Quiñones, the main character in my Caribbean Kitchen Mystery series. She hosts a cooking and culture show, is an amateur sleuth, and, in Dominoes, Danzón, and Death, is interviewing to be an adjunct anthropology professor. Like an invasive Everglades’ python, Miami can squeeze the life out of you. But, at least you will have an amazing view while taking that last breath.
Here are some crime novels that illustrate Miami’s infectious duality.
Start with the classics Charles Willeford’s Maimi Blues, James W. Hall’s Magic City, the Suspicion series featuring lawyers Gail Conor and Anthony Quintana by Barabara Parker, and Edna Buchanan’s Britt Montero series. Then sample the diversity of Miami neighborhoods via Miami Noir, the 2007 short story anthology edited by Les Standiford.
Next, I suggest Miami crime fiction by three authors with Cuban roots like me. Alex Segura’s Pete Fernandez series is Tropical Noir at its best. In Silent City, the reader meets a down-on-his-luck journalist pulled into a missing person case that is rife with murder and drugs. Pete comes out the other end, bruised and battered but with a new lease on life. The series continues with Down the Darkest Street, Dangerous Ends, Blackout, and Miami Midnight. Segura explores Miami’s shadows like only a true son of the city can.
Picking up the noir baton is Alejandro Nodarse. His debut, Blood in the Cut, is brutal and beautiful. The main character, Iggy, released from prison and grieving his mother’s death, finds himself battling to save his family’s butcher shop from a gentrification buy-out and a nefarious Everglades rancher. Nodarse’s writing is atmospheric and immersive. Blood in the Cut has fast cars, high-stakes gambles, and the untamed nature of life at the edge of wilderness.
If those two authors are too dark for your reading taste, I recommend the parrot-filled banyan trees of Carolina Garcia-Aguilera’s Lupe Solano series. Finding this series was seminal to my development as a mystery writer. It was the first time I saw a female character from my own culture written by a Latina like me in the genre that I loved. My favorite book in the seven-book series is # 4, A Miracle in Paradise. Lupe is a sexually liberated PI from a traditional Cuban family. Garcia-Aguilera weaves family dynamics, late 1990s Miami tensions, and religious themes into her stories. To understand the current state of Cuban Miami political thinking, look back twenty years with this series to its origins.
Carl Hiaasen is synonymous with Florida crime capers. He writes about Florida’s follies with wit, love, and unforgiving authenticity, thanks to his years as a journalist at The Miami Herald. For his take on Miami, read Tourist Season, Star Island, Skinny Dip, and Bad Monkey. Keeping with the whacky, Tim Dorsey’s sociopathic anti-hero Serge A. Storms frequently stops in Miami, starting with book 1, Florida Roadkill, set around Florida Marlin’s 1997 World Series game. The Maltese Iguana (#26) has an opening scene in Miami Beach featuring a socialite, a homeless man, and a savior in a bunny suit that seems outlandish, but it is all too probable.
Here are two true crime nonfiction books to prove that Miami fact is often stranger than fiction. Hotel Scarface: Where Cocaine Cowboys Partied and Plotted to Control Miami by Roben Farzad is about the infamous Mutiny at Sailboat Bay, a hotel and private club that was party central for drug dealers and celebrities. It was like a tropical version of Studio54. Brother Love: Murder, Money, and a Messiah by Sydney P. Freeberg is about the rise and imprisonment of cult leader Yahweh ben Yahweh, who was tied to fourteen murders as well as extortion. If you can’t find Brother Love via interlibrary loan, try season 1, episode 4 of the Paradise Lost: Crime in Miami podcast. (Actually, listen to all two seasons. It’s a great podcast.)
Many people are familiar with Dexter from the hit TV series. I recommend going to its source material to get the real Miami vibes. (Only the pilot and some of the first season were filmed in Miami.) There are eight Dexter novels by Jeff Lindsay. The author grew up in the Coconut Grove area of Miami. When asked about where the idea came from for his killer, who only kills criminals, Lindsay tells a story about speaking at a luncheon for Florida bail bondsmen and ambulance chasers. Their fake smiles and phoniness seeded the idea in his thoughts that serial murder might not be entirely reprehensible.
Miami is filled with contradictions. (And, maybe sociopaths, according to this list.) The city takes as much as it gives. Before you come for a visit, read some of the books I’ve recommended. You should know what you are getting into with Miami. Because, like the opening line to Edna Buchanan’s Love Kills, “You can leave Miami, but Miami never leaves you.”
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