ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS
THE MANGO SNORES
by
Michael S. Garcia
Florida International University, 2021
Miami, Florida
Professor John Dufresne, Major Professor
Set in Miami at the start of the twenty-first century, THE MANGO SNORES is a seriocomic crime novel chronicling a week in the life of Sam Espada, Cuban-American writing professor and author of the Mango series of detective fiction. Reeling from the sudden dissolution of his marriage and the abject failure of his latest book, Sam finds himself embroiled in a plot right out of one of his novels when his newest pupil, private investigator Leonard Cobb, is found stabbed through the eye with Sam’s fountain pen, leading homicide detective Vernon Harvey to peg Sam as the prime suspect. With no leads, no access to the crime scene, and nothing to go on but Cobb’s casebook, Sam and his neurotic sidekick, Max Plotkin, must unravel the plot that killed Leonard Cobb—before the plot unravels them.