One Big Joke

I just finished reading One Big Joke, the 13th book in Laurence Shames' Key West Capers series of comic novels. Shames has now written 17 of these stories. He lived in Key West when he started writing them, and they were published by Simon & Schuster. The books were very popular, getting great reviews, but eventually, Shames decided to stop writing the series and moved to LA. He then wrote a few other novels, which did not catch on, but when he decided to restart tbe Key West series, it appears to me like he could not find a major publisher. The same thing happened to James W. Hall with his Thorn novels. Now that the publishing industry has consolidated into just a few large corporations, it is hard for what Hall calls "mid-list" authors to get published. And so like Hall and Tom Corcoran, still another Key West author, he is now self-publishing these books and selling them on Amazon. Which means no used copies. Having to buy them at full price,  I am purchasing them just once in a while, which is why I am only on book 13. In any case, One Big Joke once again features Bert the Shirt, a 90-something ex-Mafia guy with a spoiled chihuahua, who helps both a comedy club owner fighting off New York mobsters, who want to take over her place, and her friend, an unemployed comedy writer, who is in the midst of a mid-life crisis. I get a chuckle out of these books, and am glad Shames has started writing them again, even if he does have to self-publish.