Wiseguy in the Sun Belt : FLORIDA STRAITS <i> By Laurence Shames</i> , <i> (Simon & Schuster: $20; 271 pp.)</i>

Raymond Chandler made Los Angeles the ultimate symbol of the Edenic Great Good Place that had become spoiled by money, sex and the human tendency to settle things through the bittersweet shortcut of a gun. His influence was of course felt on all other Los Angeles novelists. Indeed, writing about sleaze and glamour in L.A. became a kind of mythic ritualistic act, one which needed to be repeated generation after generation.

After Chandler we had Cain and after Cain there was Ross MacDonald and currently we have Robert Crais, who is funnier than anyone since Chandler. Indeed, for more than 40 years readers in more civilized spots have been able to read about the sins of Hollywood and the surrounding beach towns and feel smug and safe. However bad their particular piece of real estate is, it can’t be as hideous as smarmy, trendy Los Angeles.

Well, as a transplanted Baltimorean who likes L.A. (some of it; OK, I like the weather and the trees and the restaurants and the money and even a couple of the people), I’m happy to report that the rest of fictional America is now just as bad as Tinseltown. Now, for years Robert Parker has been bashing the swells up in Boston. And James Lee Burke is turning over the rotten underbelly of down-home, funky New Orleans, and Lawrence Block is chronicling how crummy and wasted New York is.

But the most beaten up place this side of loathsome L.A. is sun-drenched, swamp-drained Florida. Everybody who writes about Florida is in a state of terminal agony. Carl Hiaasen has written book after funny book lamenting the despoiled swamps, the theme parks, the greed-heads, the mob goombahs . . . and Elmore Leonard escaped from working-class Detroit only to find things in a more depressing state in Miami, and Charles Williford wrote about a southern Florida that sounds as if it’s straight out of True Crime magazines. People are so loathsome in Williford novels like “New Hope for the Dead” that a guy wants to wash himself every five or six pages.

I personally am worried about all this. One of the best things about living in Los Angeles is reveling in how crummy it is. I like going to, say, Sunset Plaza and watching Eurotrash and thinking that there is no Eurotrash anywhere in the world as curdled as our Eurotrash. But I can’t get this Florida thing out of my mind. I mean, look at the evidence. The Florida writers are leaner and meaner. They really hate what’s happening to their world. Guys like Crais, who is good and funny, simply can’t be mad enough any more. He knows that everything really good out here is already gone. People named Hans who shop on Rodeo are panicked that Bloods and Crips will soon run the whole show. Cheer up, Swiss guy. After all, what will they have? Cold pizza from a burned-out Spago’s? Some Bacobits from a mortared Carl’s Junior’s? A bound-and-gagged Carl himself?

No, the Florida writers are better because they’re angrier. They are still young enough to remember how perfect the place was, how wonderful the sunsets were, how unspoiled the swamps felt in the dewy morning. Indeed, there is still enough of the old Florida left for some of these writers to think that the place could still be saved. Or conversely, as in Laurence Shames’ nifty new crime novel, “Florida Straits,” that a person could leave New York and save himself in Key West.

The story concerns one Joey Goldman, half-Jewish, half-Italian, who is depressed because even though his father, Vincente Delgado, is a don, he can’t get taken seriously in the New York Mob. He’s a second-string wiseguy, a failed goombah, and he thinks that Florida is just the place for him. Down here there’s new crimes he can get into with the slower-paced locals. Down in sunset land, in the not-quite-spoiled paradise, he can lay back with his girl Sandra until he finds the right hustle. Then he can install himself as a self-made capo and just wait for the money to roll in.

Of course, this fish is definitely out of water. He tries moving in on a couple of Cubans and almost loses a valuable part of his anatomy. He tries shaking down a couple of union guys and nearly ends up like Hoffa. He finally ends up selling condos on the street--actually not even the condos, just the tour of the condos. He’s not thrilled by any of this, but he begins to accept it. Because Florida has that lazy, sun-drenched power over a person. What’s left of the natural place that is still good beckons Joey to cool out, do like his landlord, who sits in a pool all day and blissfully reads novels. In his comic way, Shames suggests that Joey has found paradise after all; it’s funky and a little grungy and too hot, but its nice and a long way from Astoria Boulevard in Queens.

Ah, but even a low-level mob guy can’t quite retire in Key West. Soon Joey’s half-brother Gino shows up. He’s like all the guys who show up in Florida novels from New York (or widely hated L.A., for that matter). He’s greedy, dumb, has only money on his mind--this time in the form of stolen emeralds. Gino and two other guys (since departed from the earth) boosted the gems from a very nasty Mafia don named Charlie Ponte, who wants them back. If Mr. Ponte doesn’t get them he’s going to kill Gino--nice and slow. Which Joey can’t allow, even though as brothers go, Gino is just a blade short of Cain.

Therein lies the tale, which is funny, elegantly written and eventually becomes a very unlikely coming-of-age novel. Joey learns to deal and wheel and ends up moving through some very narrow straits indeed.

The writing is elegant and hip, but not relentlessly so. There’s a sweet side to all this too. We really begin to like and care about Joey and his girl Sandra and hope they won’t end up being fed to crocodiles. In one scene he asks Sandra to marry him just as Ponte’s mobsters are about to cut out their tongues. Even though Joey is convinced he is going to be dead soon, Shames writes that Joey was “weirdly proud of himself for proposing marriage.” That’s good writing because it keeps the human side of things alive. (Facing certain death once in a snowy traffic accident, I remembered 1) my car turning over and over, and 2) being enormously happy I had played catch once with Johnny Unitas).

I would imagine that some of the native Florida gang won’t like Shames’ book that much. He’s not really pissed off about what’s happening to Florida. If one was Floridianly Correct, one might say that “Florida Straits” signals a kind of decline, a jadedness, a corruption of the Florida love-it-or-leave-it ethic. Shames’ view is that crime and sleaze and nature are all kind of OK together. His character is the kind of guy Carl Hiaasen would hate for screwing up the old dream of paradise. In Shames’ version, Florida is already about as corrupt as L.A. and that’s OK. It’s a place where a guy can kick back and hustle a condo and make a life. Nature’s nice but Joey isn’t going to worry about screwing up the view. He’s practical, not romantic. Sounds like he’d fit in just fine out here.

That laid-back view does rob the book of some of its energy. If a writer believes that human corruption is mainly amusing, he’s going to be a lightweight. Shames’ book isn’t up to Hiaasen’s manic level of comic invention either, and he isn’t as vicious or as funny as Leonard, who really hates (and loves) his big-time villains.

If he’s going to write great crime novels, Shames could maybe use an extra ounce of outrage, another shot of wildness. But as it is, he’s written a damned entertaining novel, about the new lost paradise, Florida. Even if he is still just another wiseguy from New York.