Night and Day — John Leslie

Gideon Lowry, full-time Conch, part-time piano player, and sometime P.I. - delves once again into the treacherous undercurrents of his native Key West when an untimely murder rocks the town's most spirited literary festival. Even Ernest himself would probably have fled Key West's Hemingway Days celebration, a week of raucous tourists and swaggering Papa pretenders that sends the locals into hiding. Thus the low profile assumed by Gideon Lowery, playing his weekly piano gig at a quiet hotel, fighting his daily urge for a drink. That's where Asia, just Asia, like Madonna, finds him. Beret-clad, with lips the color of a plum, she glides into Gideon's world on the breathless end of a classic tune. She's left her aerie at MTV to find her estranged husband, who's lost in the reverie surrounding his obsession: Hemingway. But Asia doesn't want him back, she wants a divorce, and is ready to pay handsomely for it. For Gideon, locating Frank Maguire is the easiest thousand he's ever made. Keeping the writer alive proves impossible. As the violence builds to its crescendo, mainland violence pays another nasty visit. There's an evil dancing behind the carefree facades of Duval Street, and it will take every sun-bitten ounce of Gideon's Conch resolve to reel it in.