Peopling these 14 short stories by Bill Lorrain are the inhabitants of tropical Paradise today - the folk on the edge of unbridled stupidity, the hillbilly hookers, the hectoring homeless, the tourists from  Akron, a pot smoking tour train driver and Freddie the rooster, all coalescing toward collission Here are such sweet, flitarious questions as, "Is this lust?" Here there's Lenny in the mangroves, Louis Iflesia, late wife of a rumrunner turned banker, so scared of the dark that she has a window in her coffin. There are huge Haitian rats that lurk beneath Solares Hill and then there's always Theron, appearing and reappearing on Duval Street, waiting for nothing and no-one, careful to keep the red high heels on the girl he undresses in his mind.