Barbados Heat - Hardcover

Don Bruns is a novelist, advertising executive, musician, songwriter, cook and painter who has no idea what he wants to do when he grows up. He's the author of nine books and was editor of the mystery/music anthology A Merry Band Of Murderers.

Don's published novels cover two series. One, a Caribbean thriller collection and two, the Stuff series, a humorous look at two twenty-four year old guys in South Florida who start their own detective agency and end up neck - deep in trouble. Skip and James from the Stuff series have often been compared to grown up versions of the Hardy Boys.

Jamaica Blue, Barbados Heat, South Beach Shakedown, St. Barts Breakdown and Bahama Burnout make up the Caribbean books. The Stuff series consists of Stuff To Die For, Stuff Dreams Are Made Of, Stuff To Spy For, and Don't Sweat The Small Stuff- which came out in December 2010. Bruns is currently working on the fifth Stuff book, Too Much Stuff.

His two series have won numerous awards, and the latest "Stuff" series has won a starred review in Booklist.

"Will remind the reader of Tim Dorsey's cast of whacked-out characters but with the narrative voice and feel of Mark Twain's Huck Finn."

Traveling the Caribbean for his Mick Sever series, or hovering around Miami for his "Stuff" series, Bruns enjoys the writing life. You can find him at donbrunsbooks.com

As in Bruns's mystery debut, Jamaica Blue (2002), music journalist Mick Sever doesn't so much detect as just survive in this unconvincing tale of sex and murder with a Caribbean flavor. Robert Shapply, a born-again congressman, has turned over a new leaf and now wants to clean up the record industry by holding hearings designed to put some rappers and theirs labels out of business for good. Shortly before the hearings, someone brutally murders Shapply on the steps of his D.C. townhouse. Once friendly with Shapply and best friends with Shapply's stepson, Nick Brand, Mick soured on the duo when they left him almost bankrupt in a failed joint enterprise. Soon Nick is in jail on suspicion of murder, and an up-and-coming rapper is fingered as the hit man. Nick's imperious mother, Alicia Shapply; Alicia's brother, evangelist Joseph Evans; and Mick's ex-wife, Ginny, help liven up the proceedings, lending advice or assistance as Mick tracks the story from Washington to Florida and Barbados into the distant past. Unfortunately, the author's staccato style seems merely disjointed and the plot wanders so off key, readers will be unable to carry the tune.
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