Charlie Smith’s “Men in Miami Hotels,” Florida Noir, and the Legacy of Elmore Leonard

Men in Miami Hotels by Charlie Smith Harper Perennial; 304 p. As I read Charlie Smith’s new novel, Men in Miami Hotels, I kept thinking of two things: the purpose of lovely, meticulous  prose in the context of a crime novel (or any novel for that matter), and Elmore Leonard. Men in Miami Hotels follows tough guy Cot Sims, a mid-level soldier in the “Harvard” of South Florida crime syndicates. He returns to his home town of Key West to snatch a stash […]

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