Suitcase City by Sterling Watson (Weep No More My Brother) opens with an extended flashback to protagonist Jimmy Teach's time in small-town Florida. Back then, Teach had just finished a brief career in professional football and was back in the game of smuggling drugs, or in his words, operating as a "maritime consultant." When a business deal with Guatemalans went sour, Teach competently cleaned up the mess, and moved on.
The bulk of Teach's story then takes place nearly 20 years later, in late 1990s Tampa, Fla., where a rundown neighborhood called Suitcase City gives the novel its name. Teach is reformed, more or less: he's vice-president of sales at a pharmaceutical company and has rebuilt a relationship with his teenaged daughter after his wife's (her mother's) death. But a little incident inside a bar one Friday afternoon--a tiny mistake, a single piece of rotten luck--and suddenly Teach finds himself worried about losing his house, his job, the relationship he's built with his daughter and maybe his own life.
Watson's magic is in pacing and taut prose, in the details that make his Florida setting so compelling--boats and bilge, lobsters and golf--and in a father's love for his daughter. Diverse characters enliven Teach's world, including his charming daughter, a pushy reporter and a colorful pair of police detectives who represent a range of competence and demeanor. In the end, Teach is flawed but likable, and Suitcase City is an absorbing thriller, a vivid adventure in a bright, humid, perilous underworld. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia