La Brava

Joe LaBrava spent years as a Secret Service agent before trading the job for a camera, and he now wanders Miami Beach photographing the street life around its aging hotels. When he was twelve he fell for a glamorous femme fatale on a movie-theater screen, and now that same actress, older and down on her luck, is living nearby. As LaBrava gets close to her, he finds himself in the middle of an extortion scheme in which nobody is quite what they seem, and the danger is real. Written with Elmore Leonard's trademark ear for dialogue and his feel for small-time crooks, the novel won the 1984 Edgar Award for Best Novel.