Virgin Heat is Laurence Shames’ fifth and best novel. Starting with Florida Straits and publishing a steady book a year, Shames has shed more and more plot with each outing. This new one is still a comic crime novel in name if barely in nature.

Virgin Heat relies on an astonishing coincidence to kick-start events. Plumbing supplier Louie flopped around Florida in his tourist wear, totting the camcorder that captured Ziggy Maxx mixing a Virgin Heat in a Key West bar. Back in New York he insists on showing his jittery escapades to the family.

But Louie Amaro’s relatives are less family than Family, big bro Paulie just out after nine years, stung in a set-up by that rat Sal Martucci. Who changed his name and his face to those of Florida footsoldier Ziggy Maxx. Paulie misses the point, but not so his naive, virginal twenty-something daughter Angelina. She had a thing for the sneaky Martucci – still does and next anyone knows she’s off to look for him. And when Louie realises, he sees a chance to earn that long yearned for respect from the goodfellas by bringing her back.

Shames has so honed his technique it’s as frictionless as well-oiled gun-parts. At the same time his writing has rounded out to the point where it’s as much of a joy in itself as at the service of his not-too-tight plotting. Thus amid the sizzling dialogue and deft characterisation he’ll let slip that the southern air was ‘like some fat guy’s underpants’, or the Big Apple’s highway is crumbling ‘under the smoking, rusted, veering cars of the uninsured and reckless poor.’

Not much happens when everyone gets to Florida (there’s a little bit of gun-running, a soupcon of cross-dressing), but it scarcely matters when the prose is this much fun. Oh, and choosing to hide out this band of misfits in a garish gay guest house is both inspired and surprisingly compassionate.

What with Carl Hiaasen’s last so slovenly, Elmore Leonard on something of a slump and Shames writing books as good as Virgin Heat, a shot at the title is surely now within his grasp.