Jack Thompson’s first novel doesn’t look like a novel. The unbound heap of 100-plus fax transmissions, electronically dispatched from Thompson to New Times over the past two years, bears little resemblance to Wuthering Heights, or The Scarlet Letter. Little superficial resemblance, that is. But you shouldn’t judge a book by…
In the early-morning hours of Wednesday, October 2, Metro-Dade police responded to a call from a Miami alarm company. Something or someone had tripped the burglar alarm at a business owned by a man named Matthew Block. Located at 7780 NW 53rd Street, a warehouse district near Miami International Airport,…
Nine o’clock in the morning is no time for spiritual reflection in the morgue of the Dade County Medical Examiner Department. The first corpse of the day, a pallid woman with three deep gouges above her right ear, is already in place on an autopsy table and seven others are…
Since opening in mid-1987, the sedate Savannah Moon restaurant, located on the second floor of a strip mall across South Dixie Highway from The Falls and decorated in soft pastels and earth tones, offered patrons an elegant, if pricey, respite from the hubbub of South Florida living. Between bites of…
In the summer of 1990, Miami Beach Police Chief Phillip Huber proposed a novel plan that he said would help the city cope with its increasing drug problem. When someone is arrested on drug charges in Miami Beach, why not send out a letter informing that person’s employer? Not surprisingly,…
When Derrod Bush was called before a judge last Tuesday, just before noon, chuckles rippled through the courtroom. That might seem odd, given that Bush has been charged with aggravated assault, a third-degree felony that carries a maximum punishment of five years under the state’s supervision. But consider Derrod Bush…
The four-year-old drowning victims, the urban fire that ravages too many lives, the cold-blooded street shooting, there’s not much he can do about those events except frame them for the electronic eye and the talking heads, relay the grim gist to the viewing public. As a news producer for WCIX-TV,…
In Homestead – the last piece of American terra firma before the floating realm of the Florida Keys, a place of blurred borders and naturally occurring surrealism – the summer heat has been known to drive the worst townsfolk to baroque conspiracies, and the best to strange odysseys of self-discovery…
More than two years after the state Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services (HRS) removed Lisette and Andres Nogues’s seven youngest children from their Kendall home, citing alleged physical and sexual abuse, department officials are seeking a stunning reversal. According to motions filed this past Friday at an emergency hearing…
Maybe you know somebody like Danny Donovan. A nice guy, an overgrown kid, really, with an ingratiating personality and an unfortunate tendency to run with the wrong crowd. Somebody who always seems to get into trouble, somebody who has a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong…
How much kindness can fit into convicted arms smuggler Sarkis Soghanalian’s 300-pound frame? Just ask his ex-wife, Shirley Soghanalian. “He was always bringing home anyone he could find to feed them,” she reminisced for the court during her husband’s October 23 bail hearing. “He was always giving money away until…
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaints, it seems, are all the rage at the Dade Public Defender’s Office this year. In the past dozen months, four have been filed by miffed ex-employees, two of whom are black, the other two Cuban. Long-time staffers attribute the claims to the office’s pressure-cooker atmosphere…
Once in a great while, the world of literature is graced with a new birth so promising, so spectacular, that mankind’s faith in the power of expression rekindles. It happens perhaps every eon, or perhaps every epoch. For some, the epiphanic texts are Biblical; others find their souls stirred by…
The South Florida construction industry has been hit hard by the recession, and general contractors like Louis Forti have been happy to take on virtually any work that comes their way. So Forti, president of his own company – Forti Engineering Systems – jumped at the chance to bid on…
In 1969 a young cadet in the Baltimore County Police Department received the kind of progress reports that might have led a less determined man to start thinking about another career. In one evaluation, the trainee was criticized for failing “to support the other squad leaders” and to maintain morale…
In 1989 Normandy Isle homeowners successfully lobbied Miami Beach commissioners for landscaped barricades. But residents find they’re still feeling uneasy about their lower-income neighbors, especially those who have their rent subsidized by the federal government. And when a local civic and business group began questioning subsidized housing distribution on the…
Charles Trahan, co-star of Miami’s popular rap duo Young & Restless, doesn’t belong here. He should be in a recording studio. Or on MTV. Here, at Jackson Memorial Hospital, he’s out of place, amid a tangle of bed linen and intravenous tubes, hurt filling his handsome young face. So many…
Citizens of Florida should be aware of many things. The marine ecosystem, for instance, and the importance of peaceful cultural coexistence. And now, according to Governor Lawton Chiles, they should prick up their ears and widen their eyes for pornography. According to an official state proclamation, signed by Chiles and…
At an age when most of the girls in her Liberty City housing project were treading the slippery path toward teen pregnancy, Carrie Jones was burning rubber down a less-traveled road. It wasn’t that the slim tomboy disliked girls. She just didn’t share their interests: “They was into boys. I…
The next time you find yourself at a movie, any movie, try a little experiment. Instead of watching the film for the plot, or the characters, or even for the director’s vision, watch it for details. And not just any details. Watch for bad language, for blasphemy, for violence, and…
If Armando Valdez had shelled out ten bucks to have his fortune told this summer, he might have planned a vacation for the fall. A long vacation. As it is, Valdez, a mild-mannered senior planner for the City of Miami Beach, has been the unwitting referee in a bizarre cat…
Assuming virtually everyone in Dade County runs red lights virtually all the time — as a recent in-depth study indicates — a good number of people are going to get caught, if only by happenstance. These offenders, as well as other traffic violators, face a grave choice: They can plead…
