Palm Beach Nasty
by Tom Turner ’66
Permanent Press, April 2015
Burned-out, New York homicide cop Charlie Crawford goes south to steamy Palm Beach, Florida, but after six months of pink- and green-collar crime, he’s bored out of his mind. Palm Beach has plenty of glitz, glam and hedonism, but not one murder in the last ten years. One Halloween night, Crawford is first on the scene to find a 20-year-old male swinging from a stately banyan tree. This sets in motion colliding plots involving a billionaire with a thing for young girls, a far-reaching art scam with Crawford’s girlfriend playing a starring role, and a ruthless hustler passing himself off as the long-lost son of one of the richest men in town. Add to the mix a sultry real estate broker who knows where all the bodies are buried, a gorgeous forensic cop usually one step ahead of Crawford, a Mutt and Jeff combo of stone cold killers, and you have Palm Beach Nasty. Fast-moving, funny, slightly off-kilter and everything you ever wanted to know about the most scandalous town in America and its larger-than-life citizens.
Tom Turner spent time as an award-winning copywriter at several Manhattan advertising agencies, but after years of post-Mad Men life, he made a radical change, moving to commercial real estate. A few years later he was in Palm Beach, buying, renovating and selling houses. On the side, he wrote Palm Beach Nasty, its sequel, Palm Beach Poison, and a screenplay, Underwater. He recently completed his third novel, Killing Time in Charleston.