Smith’s prose is pitch perfect and fierce, and I’m always glad to find myself on a ride through his America, in the company of his Americans and the dark, absurd tumult of their passionate follies.” — Philip Gourevitch, New Yorker
“Charlie Smith’s terrific new novel…walks a line between genre and something considerably wilder, a fictional territory where a character might lose his or her soul…where narrative arises out of language, and scenes are important less for what happens in them than for how they are described.” — David Ulin, Los Angeles Times
“In Smith’s masterfully lyrical prose, what could have been a simple pulpy adventure becomes a rewarding, and even challenging, examination of time, fate and fatalism that recalls the best work of Denis Johnson or Robert Stone.” — Nicholas Mancusi, Miami Herald
“[T]he perfect summer read, especially if you like your summer reads perfectly offbeat…Men in Miami Hotels reads like a suspenser by Elmore Leonard, if Leonard were having a fever dream….He writes like an angel, an angel...with a broken heart.” — Kurt Rabin, Free Lance-Star
“Smith writes some of the most elaborately beautiful sentences of any writer living today, and in Men in Miami Hotels, these sentences coil dreamily around the lush Floridian landscape, the loved women wrinkling before Cot’s eyes, the undignified final breaths breathed in sudden bloodbaths.” — Tracy O'Neill, L Magazine
“A mastery such as Smith’s is rare, and…the bounties furnished are great: pearls of understanding that circle some kind of holy instruction; the author’s gifts to us for better navigation in our own stories; and tools that we will access long after the precise arrangement of words has left us.” — Kathleen Alcott, Los Angeles Review of Books
“What’s better for your poolside reading than a good old literary gangster novel? That’s what you’ll get and more from the always excellent Charlie Smith, who manages to spin a violent tale with uncommon poeticism and knockout sentences.” — Emily Temple, Flavorwire
“Smith’s edgy prose is as arresting as Miami art deco, and the psychology at work here is as tangled and dark as a mangrove swamp….Smith turns a rogue gangster’s tale into a glimmering, sharply faceted, hauntingly philosophical tragedy of cosmic flaws, stunning betrayals, and bloody revenge.” — Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
“Smith writes in a curious blend of registers that has the narrative drive of an airplane read and the mystical resonance of verse…The result is a haunting and starkly grim fantasia on love, mourning, and the alienation inflicted by time.” — Publishers Weekly
“Charlie Smith fills language with so much life that his fictional worlds take on an uncanny substance. We can taste those mackerel fillets straight out of the old metal drum smoker, inhale the smell of starlight, and share the guilty exhilaration as Cot slips and slides his way toward survival.” — Joanna Scott, author of Follow Me
“Charlie Smith is one of America’s top unsung heroes of literature…The action is casually explosive as career criminal Cot Sims confronts his past, his true love, and his true nature. Come for the character and the story, but stay for the beautiful prose—intricate and lyric and startling.” — Chris Offutt, author of No Heroes and The Same River Twice
“With exquisite nonchalance, Smith follows his smart, witty gangsters in this exciting novel of love, danger, and intrigue. He does something else as well: he incorporates the sheer joy of being alive. Bravo to him for this bold gift to us…This tale is his streetwise, life-affirming masterwork.” — Paul West, author of The Tent of Orange Mist
“In the end I was too interested in the unexpected plot, too surprised by his characters, too taken with his turns of phrase, to reject him. I was also too seduced by the island sounds and scent of the coastal foliage, the softer, lovelier side of the Orientalist gaze.” — Lydia Kiesling, The Millions
[T]he perfect summer read, especially if you like your summer reads perfectly offbeat…Men in Miami Hotels reads like a suspenser by Elmore Leonard, if Leonard were having a fever dream….He writes like an angel, an angel...with a broken heart.
Smith writes some of the most elaborately beautiful sentences of any writer living today, and in Men in Miami Hotels, these sentences coil dreamily around the lush Floridian landscape, the loved women wrinkling before Cot’s eyes, the undignified final breaths breathed in sudden bloodbaths.
A mastery such as Smith’s is rare, and…the bounties furnished are great: pearls of understanding that circle some kind of holy instruction; the author’s gifts to us for better navigation in our own stories; and tools that we will access long after the precise arrangement of words has left us.
Smith’s prose is pitch perfect and fierce, and I’m always glad to find myself on a ride through his America, in the company of his Americans and the dark, absurd tumult of their passionate follies.
What’s better for your poolside reading than a good old literary gangster novel? That’s what you’ll get and more from the always excellent Charlie Smith, who manages to spin a violent tale with uncommon poeticism and knockout sentences.
Smith’s edgy prose is as arresting as Miami art deco, and the psychology at work here is as tangled and dark as a mangrove swamp….Smith turns a rogue gangster’s tale into a glimmering, sharply faceted, hauntingly philosophical tragedy of cosmic flaws, stunning betrayals, and bloody revenge.
Charlie Smith fills language with so much life that his fictional worlds take on an uncanny substance. We can taste those mackerel fillets straight out of the old metal drum smoker, inhale the smell of starlight, and share the guilty exhilaration as Cot slips and slides his way toward survival.
In Smith’s masterfully lyrical prose, what could have been a simple pulpy adventure becomes a rewarding, and even challenging, examination of time, fate and fatalism that recalls the best work of Denis Johnson or Robert Stone.
Charlie Smith’s terrific new novel…walks a line between genre and something considerably wilder, a fictional territory where a character might lose his or her soul…where narrative arises out of language, and scenes are important less for what happens in them than for how they are described.
In the end I was too interested in the unexpected plot, too surprised by his characters, too taken with his turns of phrase, to reject him. I was also too seduced by the island sounds and scent of the coastal foliage, the softer, lovelier side of the Orientalist gaze.
With exquisite nonchalance, Smith follows his smart, witty gangsters in this exciting novel of love, danger, and intrigue. He does something else as well: he incorporates the sheer joy of being alive. Bravo to him for this bold gift to us…This tale is his streetwise, life-affirming masterwork.
Charlie Smith is one of America’s top unsung heroes of literature…The action is casually explosive as career criminal Cot Sims confronts his past, his true love, and his true nature. Come for the character and the story, but stay for the beautiful prose—intricate and lyric and startling.
What’s better for your poolside reading than a good old literary gangster novel? That’s what you’ll get and more from the always excellent Charlie Smith, who manages to spin a violent tale with uncommon poeticism and knockout sentences.
Smith writes some of the most elaborately beautiful sentences of any writer living today, and in Men in Miami Hotels, these sentences coil dreamily around the lush Floridian landscape, the loved women wrinkling before Cot’s eyes, the undignified final breaths breathed in sudden bloodbaths.
In Smith’s masterfully lyrical prose, what could have been a simple pulpy adventure becomes a rewarding, and even challenging, examination of time, fate and fatalism that recalls the best work of Denis Johnson or Robert Stone.
Smith's eighth novel is an offbeat crime story that portrays a gangster with more soul than smarts. Cot Sims has returned to his hometown of Key West, and that's bad news. What alarms the locals is not that Cot is a gangster (he's one of their own, so they'll cut him some slack), but that he's a screw-up, trailing woe. For 18 years, Cot has been a utility guy for Albertson, head of a major drug smuggling operation in Miami. He's come home to help his mother, Ella; the town won't let her move back into her house (hurricane damage). Palms need to be greased. Cot's dilemma is that he's just blown his last dollar at the track. Then he gets word Albertson wants him to check on a stash of emeralds. Why not buy off the inspector with a gem? It's twisted logic, inviting Albertson's retribution, but vintage Cot. Before that can happen, Cot's oldest friend, CJ, a cross-dressing entertainer guarding the gems, is found dead on the beach, the stones gone. Meanwhile, Cot has resumed his on-again, off-again affair with his moll Marcella, a lawyer defiantly unfaithful to her prosecutor husband, while still finding time to read Virgil, his favorite author, and ruminate on the whole sad mess of life and death; he's more like one of Graham Greene's spiritual wrecks than the killer he is. Is he credible? The Virgil is a bit much, but readers will be willing to believe in Cot's self-destructive spree until the plot becomes altogether too wild and woolly. The introspection outweighs the action, though there's plenty of that too, including a kidnapping, a scary flight to the Gulf Coast, a showdown with Albertson (the climax in a more restrained novel), a Key West shootout between cops and mobsters, and a corpse-strewn finale in Havana. Cot racks up many kills: Give him his due, the guy can shoot.
