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Laurence Shames

Goodreads Author

Born

Newark, NJ, The United States

Website

http://www.LaurenceShames.com

Genre

Mystery & Thrillers, Humor, Nonfiction

Influences

Raymond Chandler, Charlie Chaplin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Joseph Con ...more

Member Since

June 2011

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Laurence Shames has been a New York City taxi driver, lounge singer, furniture mover, lifeguard, dishwasher, gym teacher, and shoe salesman. Having failed to distinguish himself in any of those professions, he turned to writing full-time in 1976 and has not done an honest day’s work since.

His basic laziness notwithstanding, Shames has published more than twenty books and hundreds of magazine articles and essays. Best known for his critically acclaimed series of Key West Capers--14 titles and counting!--he has also authored non-fiction and enjoyed considerable though largely secret success as a collaborator and ghostwriter. Shames has penned four New York Times bestsellers. These have appeared on four different lists, under four different na Laurence Shames has been a New York City taxi driver, lounge singer, furniture mover, lifeguard, dishwasher, gym teacher, and shoe salesman. Having failed to distinguish himself in any of those professions, he turned to writing full-time in 1976 and has not done an honest day’s work since.

His basic laziness notwithstanding, Shames has published more than twenty books and hundreds of magazine articles and essays. Best known for his critically acclaimed series of Key West Capers--14 titles and counting!--he has also authored non-fiction and enjoyed considerable though largely secret success as a collaborator and ghostwriter. Shames has penned four New York Times bestsellers. These have appeared on four different lists, under four different names, none of them his own. This might be a record.

Born in Newark, New Jersey in 1951, to chain-smoking parents of modest means but flamboyant emotions, Shames did not know Philip Roth, Paul Simon, Queen Latifa, Shaquille O’Neal, or any of the other really cool people who have come from his hometown. He graduated summa cum laude from NYU in 1972 and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. As a side note, both his alma mater and honorary society have been extraordinarily adept at tracking his many address changes through the decades, in spite of the fact that he’s never sent them one red cent, and never will.

It was on an Italian beach in the summer of 1970 that Shames first heard the sacred call of the writer’s vocation. Lonely and poor, hungry and thirsty, he’d wandered into a seaside trattoria, where he noticed a couple tucking into a big platter of fritto misto. The man was nothing much to look at but the woman was really beautiful. She was perfectly tan and had a very fine-gauge gold chain looped around her bare tummy. The couple was sharing a liter of white wine; condensation beaded the carafe. Eye contact was made; the couple turned out to be Americans. The man wiped olive oil from his rather sensual lips and introduced himself as a writer. Shames knew in that moment that he would be one too.

He began writing stories and longer things he thought of as novels. He couldn’t sell them.

By 1979 he’d somehow become a journalist and was soon publishing in top-shelf magazines like Playboy, Outside, Saturday Review, and Vanity Fair. (This transition entailed some lucky breaks, but is not as vivid a tale as the fritto misto bit, so we’ll just sort of gloss over it.) In 1982, Shames was named Ethics columnist of Esquire, and also made a contributing editor to that magazine.

By 1986 he was writing non-fiction books. The critical, if not the commercial, success of these first established Shames’ credentials as a collaborator/ghostwriter. His 1991 national bestseller, Boss of Bosses, written with two FBI agents, got him thinking about the Mafia. It also bought him a ticket out of New York and a sweet little house in Key West, where he finally got back to Plan A: writing novels. Given his then-current preoccupations, the novels naturally featured palm trees, high humidity, dogs in sunglasses, and New York mobsters blundering through a town where people were too laid back to be afraid of them. But this part of the story is best told with reference to the books themselves, so please spend some time and explore them.

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Laurence Shames’s books

Average rating: 4.08 · 24,673 ratings · 1,255 reviews · 40 distinct works • Similar authors

	Florida Straits (Key West, #1) 4.04 avg rating — 3,500 ratings — published 1992 — 17 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Not Fade Away: A Short Life Well Lived by Laurence Shames (Goodreads Author), Peter Barton 4.23 avg rating — 1,785 ratings — published 2003 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Scavenger Reef (Key West, #2) 3.98 avg rating — 1,666 ratings — published 1994 — 19 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Sunburn (Key West, #3) 4.17 avg rating — 1,544 ratings — published 1995 — 23 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Tropical Depression (Key West Capers Book 4) 4.12 avg rating — 1,479 ratings — published 1996 — 21 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Mangrove Squeeze (Key West, #6) 4.18 avg rating — 1,344 ratings — published 1998 — 21 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Shot on Location (Key West, #9) 4.18 avg rating — 1,128 ratings — published 2013 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Naked Detective (Key West, #8) 3.97 avg rating — 1,184 ratings — published 2000 — 20 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Virgin Heat (Key West, #5) 4.02 avg rating — 1,157 ratings — published 1997 — 25 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Welcome to Paradise (Key West, #7) 4.09 avg rating — 1,125 ratings — published 1999 — 24 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Laurence Shames's Blog

The Idea That Wouldn’t Go Away

Some years ago, I got what I thought was a pretty good book idea.

Two ghostwriters, strangers, happen to meet in a Key West bar. Both are fairly successful, meaning they’re scraping by without a day job. But both are regarded by their publishers as one-trick ponies. One does Mafia memoirs, the other cranks out detective stories under the names of bestselling authors who have died. So they get

Series by Laurence Shames

Key West (19 books)
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Laurence Shames (Goodreads Author)

4.16 avg rating — 20,988 ratings

Laurence is Currently Reading

Laurence Shames is currently reading

The Overstory

by Richard Powers

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Oct 01, 2019 07:24PM

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The Leopard

by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

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The U.S. Constitution with The Declaration of Independence and The Articles of Confederation

by Founding Fathers

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Jun 06, 2022 08:29PM

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Laurence Shames made a comment on The Idea That Wouldn’t Go Away " Dorian wrote: "Sounds like another good one! Look forward to reading it. I need to catch up. The last book of yours I read was Paradise Gig, which was ...more "
Jan 20, 2024 07:51AM · see blog post
Laurence Shames wrote a new blog post The Idea That Wouldn’t Go Away Some years ago, I got what I thought was a pretty good book idea.Two ghostwriters, strangers, happen to meet in a Key West bar. Both are fairly succ Read more of this blog post »
Jan 19, 2024 02:16AM · 3 likes · like

More of Laurence's books…

Quotes by Laurence Shames (?)

“Why are we inspired by another person's courage? Maybe because it gives us the sweet and genuine surprise of discovering some trace, at least, of the same courage in ourselves.”
― Laurence Shames

tags: starbucks-coffee-cup-quotes

3 likes

“Success and failure. We think of them as opposites, but they're really not. They're companions - the hero and the sidekick.”
― Laurence Shames

3 likes

“On thick-built men like Joe Mulvane, they tend to bind around the thighs, the back seam has an annoying tendency to crawl between the buttocks. When such men sit and lean forward, say, against a bar, the waistband of their trousers binds them in the belly, while at the base of their spines an unattractive gap appears and seems to tug their shirttails out as well as to create a natural channel for sweat to pour. A belt doesn't close the trench in back; it only presents a retaining wall that bites into the flesh below the navel.”
― Laurence Shames, Scavenger Reef

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Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
Mystery/Thriller ...: jan 2012 - sandi	5	22	Feb 02, 2012 01:53PM
Readers and Reading: January 2012 reads	16	25	Feb 07, 2012 12:35PM
Mystery/Thriller ...: feb 2014 - sandi	9	19	Mar 02, 2014 09:57PM
Mystery/Thriller ...: Barry's January	15	20	Feb 05, 2015 04:33PM
Cozy Mysteries : Title and Author Game, Round 2	15570	1206	Mar 21, 2016 09:15AM
Audiobooks: Key West Capers Series: Key West Luck, by Laurence Shames	5	15	Jul 17, 2016 07:36PM
Cozy Mysteries : Title and Author game, Round 3	13653	559	Apr 03, 2017 09:53AM